JULES HOEPTING
Design Editor
Pumpkin torture by means of carving needs to stop.
This method of antagonizing is going stronger than ever; within the last month, over 60 million pumpkins were tortured by carving.
In order to empathize with the pain millions of gourds face every year, I spoke with Steven Philks, a pumpkin who is currently dying from carving-induced problems.
“I grew up in a pumpkin patch governed by humans. During my budding, everything was great. The farmers specifically sprayed us with insecticides and pesticides so that we wouldn’t get diseases — that’s what they said! I believed ‘em; I even used to tell my friend Billy Roberts how lucky we were to grow up in the patch because we got to grow up with other pumpkins and got to be buddin’ up healthy and strong. Oh, sometimes we fought each other for sunlight and teased the pumpkins that were really little, but when I look through Heinze’s sight, I see fond memories.
“Then, out o’ the blue, those farmers — the ones that I loved — started pickin’ some of us. They frank-o-ly cut us off our stems and hauled us onto ‘eir human thing-o-majigs! It was horrifying. No gourd could sleep at night — pumpkins kept havin’ night terrors. All gourds could think about was who had been picked and who was the next one that was gonna get picked. I remember how those farmers took Billy a day or so before they took me. It was so tragic to see your friend of 106 days hauled away, slashed right off o’ his stem. Then they came for me. The picker looked at all o’ us real careful, inspectin’ us, then decided I was the pumpkin to be picked. The human started walkin’ towards me. I screamed in silence. A sharp, shiny object dangled from the human’s hand and they slashed it across my stem. I expected it to be painful, but it wasn’t. All my senses o’ pain were numb once my stem was off. But I was still slowly dyin’… I knew I could never live as long as I could have if I was still connected to my stem.
“The ride in the thing-o-majig was bumpy. All o’ us pumpkins talked to each other ‘bout what we thought might happen. Susie Magee thought we were gonna be made into pumpkin pie, which is such a gruesome conception. But what really happened was so much worse.
“They took us off o’ the thing-o-majig and put us on to flat wood. Put us on different sections, based on size. I was average. They took out ‘eir water sprayer and blasted us ‘till all our dirt fell off. Can you imagine? They even took our dirt! But we had each other. O’ so we thought. Soon enough, humans we’d never seen before thrust ‘eir hands ‘round whatever pumpkins they pleased and stuck us in ‘eir thing-o-majigs. Susie was one o’ the first to go; figures — she was tragically pretty. After the sun came and went a few times, some humans decided they owned me. They picked me off o’ the ground and stuck me in their thing-o-majig. It was dark and smelled like some offal impression o’ fern trees in there. I rolled ‘round quite a bit, wonderin’ what tragic thing was goin’ to happen to me next.
“The human placed me on a flat surface pell-mell with sharp, shiny objects. I was so scared I couldn’t move. The human took a triangular, sharp, shiny, cold thingy and stabbed it in my head. Oh, the horror, the horror! The human started cuttin’ ‘round my dehydrated stem. They ripped out my knob and a portion o’ my bones that came with it. Oh, it couldn’t get worse — that’s what I told myself — but I was fibbin’ to my thinkin’ fibers. The human scooped out all o’ my insides. Every single seed and mush that went with it. They stuck some sharp thing through my skull and made some weird kind o’ marks and holes. As if I weren’t already some effigy of myself, the human put me outside so the whole entire world could behold the damage done to my corpulent!
“Oh, it got worse. After the sun came and went a few more times, the human placed fire — real fire — inside of me. Light shot through my wounds. My damaged corpulent was glowin’. When the moon came, humans kept walkin’ up to me and gawkin’ at me with applaudin’ faces. Yes, you heard me right; those humans thought my wounds were awe-strikin’.
“Anyhow, when the sun started to come again it o-ccurred to me maybe the tourture was the humans’ way o’ showin’ appreciation for pumpkins. It o-ccurred to me maybe the humans weren’t tryin’ to torture us; maybe humans were enhacin’ us to some style o’ human beauty. I thought to myself, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all, having a human-caused premature death. I got to be displayed as a sign o’ beauty. Isn’t that a nice thought? To think the pumpkins who get carved are the lucky ones?”
After hearing the story-equivalent of a five MPH turn on a 55 MPH road, I needed time to adjust.
I paused Philks to ask him how he developed such a drastic change in view. Philks’s response was that his experience was indeed horrifying until he realized it wasn’t.
“If cutting holes in pumpkins is a p-o-pular thing to you humans, then lots o’ pumpkins are gonna end up with holes in ‘em. So why should pumpkins live ‘eir lives in fear of what’s gonna happen when they can live much more peacefully knowin’ that it’s all for a good cause: human beauty standards.”
I was astonished with Philks’ remarks; I reminded him that the intention of my article was to raise awareness about the torture humans caused pumpkins by carving them.
I reminded him that gourds do not read newspapers and he would not relieve the fear of any pumpkins by sharing his realization.
If less people carved pumpkins, less pumpkins would have to go through the traumatizing experience of being carved. Philks’s sustained expression told me he did not care.
I am a busy person with many social causes; I simply did not have enough time to find a different pumpkin whose thoughts were in-line with my reporting bias.
My deadline for an article with 1,000 words was an hour after I interviewed Philks, so I worked with what material I had. I apologize for the misleading title and opening paragraph.
Perhaps pumpkin carving really isn’t as bad as I thought it was.
UPDATE: Steven Philks rotted to death the day this article was originally published.