Blabberings

by Abby Conner

(contributing writer)

I was sick of that ridiculous pumpkin. All it did was sit there and rot. It had been molding for a while; now it was starting to smell.

Camille was my roommate. We had been roommates a grand total of three months when she came home with a pumpkin. There was a sparkle in her eye when she walked through the door of our third floor dorm room clutching a pumpkin. I could not quite identify the sparkle at first. It might have been a sparkle of mischief or a sparkle of knowing, but looking back I now realize that it was a sparkle of utmost joy, a sparkle of attachment, a sparkle of love. At that moment in time, I had no idea the struggle the reddish, greenish, orange pumpkin would bring to me or our other roommate, Hannah.

The pumpkin was dubbed Pierre and was strategically placed on the pink drawers in the bedroom that Camille and I shared, so he could be seen from any point in the whole room. The naming of the pumpkin should have been a sign. In Monster’s Inc., Mike told Sully not to give Boo a name because “Once you name it, you start to get attached to it!” Camille had named the pumpkin Pierre, but it was her first pumpkin. Surely she would not try to keep it forever, right? At the very least, it would stay in our room until Christmas, and then she would have to throw the pumpkin away, right?

Wrong.

Camille took the pumpkin home for Christmas break. Her parents would not let her keep it over the break, right? They would make her see that keeping a pumpkin for so long was foolhardy, right?

Wrong.

Merry Christmas, Camille and Pierre!

The only good thing about Camille taking Pierre home for Christmas break was that it was the last I would ever see of him. Camille wouldn’t bring the pumpkin back after the break, right? She would not bring an old, rotting, molding pumpkin back to our dorm room and think that we would be okay with it being there, right?

Wrong.

Camille brought Pierre back after Christmas break. After a few weeks, Hannah and I had enough. Pierre was gross. He was beyond gross. He was covered in moldy spots. I was terrified that I would walk into our room after class one day and Pierre would have become so rotten he burst open, leaking his juices all over the pink drawers and the floor.

“Either you can throw Pierre away, or Abby and I will,” Hannah threatened.

Camille hesitated. I could see the defiance in her eyes.

“Hannah’s right, Camille. That pumpkin has got to go. He is going to rot into pieces, and I don’t want to be the one to clean his remains off of the floor,” I said slightly more sympathetic. (I knew that Camille would be more willing to listen if Hannah and I were slightly less demanding.)

Camille thought for a second. She was having a mental war in her head. She did not want to give up Pierre, but she also felt it would be too traumatic to wipe his remnants up off of the floor.

“Okay,” she sighed after a while. “But I want to do something special for him.”

It was decided. Pierre the pumpkin, who had adorned the pink drawers for nearly four months, would be given a funeral. But not just any funeral, Pierre would be given a funeral fit for such a valiant pumpkin. Pierre did not deserve for his grave to be a raccoon-infested dumpster where the wild cats would scavenge his carcass. No. Pierre deserved to rest in the wilderness forever, like wild pumpkins. Pierre would be forever free to roam the grassy fields of pumpkin heaven. To achieve this goal, we would throw Pierre out of our third floor window into the woods behind our building. It would not quite be the grassy fields of pumpkin heaven, but it was the best we could do under such pressure. Camille could change her mind at any second.

Goodnight, Sweet Pumpkin–

The time had come. I could see Camille gathering her courage and strength as she prepared to hoist the pumpkin out of the window. She sat up in the armchair and sniveled one last goodbye to her beloved pumpkin. Right as she was going to release Pierre into the great beyond, she fell backwards.

“I can’t do it!” she exclaimed.

She held Pierre out in front of her, gazing at him with the same sparkle in her eye as the day she brought him through the front door. She rambled on about how much she loved him even though he was gross. The scene would have been sweet, if she was not talking to a rotting, molding, disgusting pumpkin.

Pumpkin.

As Camille was lamenting over the thought of Pierre plunging three stories into the dirt, Hannah came barreling out of her room. She snatched Pierre from Camille’s arms and hurled him through the open window.

“Pierre!” Camille cried as she lunged towards the window as though she could pluck the pumpkin out of the air before he fell to his inevitable doom. Through Camille’s screams and sobs, we heard a soft splat.

Pierre was dead.

It cannot be said that all pumpkins will be missed, but Pierre will be. Pierre was the best first pumpkin Camille ever had. Several weeks later, I looked out the window to where Pierre had fallen. Most of him had decayed, been eaten by animals, or washed away in the rain. Through the dirt and the leaves, a single flower was sprouting from Pierre’s final resting place, serving as a gentle reminder of our pumpkin companion.