I Was a Tomato

I was a tomato. I lived in a box until the farmer needed me. Then I was reborn as a tomato. Every few months in the same garden. It was a simple life, a good life, my life. No problems, but not a whole lot happened to me either. I was safe in my garden, dangling on my plant, or resting comfortably in the cool box with my family.

Then one day when the farmer opened the box he saw that I was a woman. He gave me a blue shirt with a black jumper to wear and sent me on my way.

“What about my family?” I asked.

“They will be here when you get back,” said the farmer.

I decided the first thing I wanted to do was see a movie. I had seen commercials for movies when the farmer ate his dinner in front of the television.

The movie was good, but confusing. Sitting next to me was a little boy who got upset during a particularly bloody scene. “Don’t worry," his mother told him, "It’s only ketchup.”

After the movie I walked out into the lobby that was filled with people. I wanted to go to a store I saw on a commercial and buy my husband a present. I felt confused and had to turn and side step around people several times, and eventually found my way out the wrong door.

A very large, ugly man smiled at me. Being a tomato I was naïve about men and smiled back as I walked out the back door of the movie theater into the ally.

“May I walk with you?” the giant man started walking next to me and smiled with a big ugly smile.

“Sure,” I said. I didn’t really want the man walking with me, but I didn’t want to anger this awful person. Tomatoes are easy to crush.

They say first impressions are important, well, they were right. This man was pretty gross. He grabbed my butt and said disgusting things to me. I started running toward what I thought was a store. I didn’t look back to see if he was following me, but when I went inside the building the man was nowhere in sight.

I figured I would browse in the store for a while and then leave when I was sure the guy had gotten bored and wandered off. I was very disappointed to see that I was in a small restaurant. The waitresses all wore pajamas and offered everyone a large mug of water as soon as they walked in. I saw several large tables with families eating bread and sipping from large cups.

“No thank you,” I said to the waitress, waving the cup away. “I came in here to get away from a man who was making me feel nervous, do you mind if I wait for a while?”

The waitress put the mug of water down and pointed to a table in the corner by the window. I thought it was neat that the waitress was letting me sit at the most fancy table, which had a huge bouquet of flowers on it, but when I got closer I realized that is just a spare table where they keep the extra centerpieces..

I pulled out my cell phone that the farmer gave me before I left and called a friend of mine. Another vegetable that had turned into a woman. She lived nearby and could give me a ride. Voice mail. Dammit she never answers her phone.

I sat at the table by the window with lots of centerpieces for a long time. Maybe if I turned back into a tomato the man would leave me alone.

I looked around at the people in the restaurant. I thought about how safe and warm I would feel on a slice of their bread, toasted up with some cheese and maybe a little fresh basil. Life is so much less complicated when you are a vegetable.