Vegetables

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The man tried to express himself. 

He failed. 

“Bloated,” he wrote.
“Vegetables,” he wrote. 
“Bloated with vegetables,” he revised.

He then continued with: “Trouble spelling ‘vegetables.’”  He misspelled “vegetables” at every attempt to write it.  Then autocorrected every instance. 

Why? 

Because “vegetables,” he rationalized, must not be misspelled. 

“No,” he told himself.  “Not true.  A lie.”  

But who posited it?
 A liar did.
 He did. 

The truth:  He autocorrected out of fear.  “Autocorrected, fearing scorn.  Unarticulated scorn.  Your scorn,” he concluded.  “Your scorn is sensed.”  He wrote it down, too.  “Before you’ve read this, your scorn is sensed.” 

He refuses to take responsibility.  

“Blame vegetables,” he wrote.  “Go ahead.  Blame ‘em.”  And then this dawned on him: “Vegetables provide no salvation.”  He proceeded to cling to this notion.  “Who said they did?  Somebody did.  Somebody said.”  But he could not think up who.  Who might’ve said. 

“Give me a Big Mac.” 
Now he’s getting testy. 
“Fuck your vegetables.  Give me a Big Mac.  Hand me your Big Mac.”  But he was alone.  Still, he continued, aloud, and upon the page,  “No.  Don’t.  Besides, I have to pee.” 

And he really does, have to pee, but he stays put. 

“Revise regardless,” he wrote.  “Too sleepy to scoot chair back, rise, shuffle out and down and through to toilet.”  He’s got it all mapped out.  In his head.  Why?  Because he’s done it hundreds, if not thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of times.  He is not, after all, a young man.  “Will do it soon,” he promises (this, in regard to urinating).  “Pressure is building,” he observes.  “I’d rather shit,” he confesses. 

“The fucking vegetables.  Fuck your vegetables.”

But the vegetables were his. 
He had bought them. 

For who? 
For who else? 
For himself. 

“No.  Don’t.  Vegetables are not for fucking.”  He reconsiders:  “Well, maybe they are.  Some of them.  But not for me.  I don’t need to stick a vegetable anywhere up myself.  Not to have ‘a good time,’ I don’t.  Although, up until now, I’ve never considered it.  No.”  He does not, after all, want to be thought of as a weirdo.  (Too Late, some would say.)  “Vegetables will, in my life, continue to serve the purpose they were originally intended for:  
Nourishment. 
Yes. 
Bloating.  
Unfortunately. 
Took Gas-X. 
Took Citrucel. 
Still bloated.  
Rat bastard vegetables.” 

Finally, he makes this discovery:
“Spelling vegetables correctly sans autocorrect now. 
Perhaps pressure to pee helps to…  Nah.”

Nah. 
               

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