After
years of therapy
and
reading pop psychology books,
Mrs.
Potato Head came to realize
that
she was married
to
a narcissist.
Most
people thought
that
Mr. Potato Head was
a
wonderful guy because
he
had been amusing children for years,
unaware
that he secretly despised them.
They
might have been shocked to learn
that
he had two sprouts of his own,
after
his secret affair with the sweet potato
in
the next row of the garden,
and
afterwards he completely
disowned
these tater tots and
would
have nothing more to do
with
their mother.
Years
after they were married,
Mrs.
Potato Head found out
about
this indiscretion, but she
forgave
him because he was,
after
all, a young spud whose lust
overpowered
his judgment.
And
she kept on forgiving him
for
his indiscretions,
his
temper tantrums,
his
petty tyranny
and
his broken promises.
But
it was the neglect
that
hurt the worst.
He
liked to be seen
with
her in public, and
in
films and commercials
but
only because she
made
him look good.
People
constantly
told
them they were a cute couple
and
that fed his ego.
But
in their private life
he
ignored her most of the
time,
preferring to
hang
out with Oscar the Orange
and
Pete the Pepper,
and
more than once she caught him
ogling
Cookie Cucumber and Katie Carrot.
One
day in October
she
realized that she didn't need
him,
and she decided to leave.
She
packed up various
accessories
-- shoes, extra mouths,
eyes,
arms and everything that would
fit
in her car, and she left.
As
she was driving
on
a lonely stretch of highway
she
saw something in
the
distance -- a figure lying
on
the gravel by the
guard
rail. She pulled over
and
saw that it was a banana.
She
thought it might have been
tossed
out of a car window
or
fallen off a fruit truck.
She
rummaged through
her
trunk, pulled out extra pairs
of
eyes, ears, arms, legs
as
well as a nose and mouth,
which
she put on the banana.
The
banana breathed,
blinked
his eyes, and smiled
at
Mrs. Potato Head.
She
smiled back at him
and
they both kne
they
had instantly fallen in love.
She
helped the banana,
whom
she named Byron,
to
his feet and into the
passenger
seat of her car.
She
got behind the steering wheel
and they drove off
into their new life together. - Jeff Barnes
