Writing Prompt: At the Pumpkin Farm

I was at the local pumpkin farm last weekend. Took a hay ride, played in some shucked corn, had my photo taken behind several of those funny painted signs.

It was one of those days with a bright blue sky and the wind blowing so fiercely that tears run down your face. Nonetheless, I found it perfect.

I love picking my own pumpkins. I do it every year, like an annual pilgrimage. It brings back fond memories…

Like the year I went in elementary school. It was cloudy. It was damp. The ride felt longer than it should have been. We got to the farm and it had nearly been picked clean by other school trips. Frost had hit the fields at least once already, because the vines had dropped, revealing all the mud and a dearth of lovely orange globes. The barrenness was evident before we’d even parked.

We spent a good hour, maybe longer, walking around acres of fields, kicking rotting pumpkins and looking at the remains of some unidentifiable animal left behind in the field by another.

Finally, I found a pumpkin I liked. So did everyone else. Each pumpkin had character. Each of us liked a particular one for a particular reason. Each of us thought, “Mine is the best. I wouldn’t trade this pumpkin for anything.”

Then, we were herded onto the bus and rushed back to the school in time for dismissal. The bus driver hurried along, and we were doing great until the light turned red…and she slammed on the brakes. Hard.

All those beautiful pumpkins? Rolled and tumbled forward to the front of the bus, banging and clanging along until they careened into each other in a big heap, some of them falling into the little well of a staircase by the door.

All that time choosing a pumpkin? Wasted. As we were each handed a pumpkin willy-nilly from the stack by the driver on our way off the bus.

Sadness.

So, that’s my pumpkin farm story… and your prompt.

Write about your best (or worst) day getting a pumpkin. You don’t have to tell a “farm” story. Perhaps you bought yours at the corner store — the biggest you could find — and didn’t realize then that pumpkins get heavier the longer you carry them. Did you have to carry it up a six-floor walk up? Did you drop it? Did you buy a pumpkin and keep it until the day before Halloween, and when you cut it open to make a jack-o-lantern you’d found it was rotten? Did you ever win a carving contest?