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The Melonflowers
Jul. 9th, 2007 05:55 pmI had a fairly large surprise at work on Friday, as while I was on the phone to Whitney asking what my prescription number was I heard my name being called from the other side of the room. We work in the quietest office in the world (even more so when the people who control all the parking spaces in America aren't there, as one of the requirements for working at that company is to have an intensely annoying ringtone) and it's unusual to hear anyone looking for anyone, so I assumed it must be another lost delivery man again. However, no one ever delivers anything to me there.
I stood up to see him looking around for someone who looked like a David Newton, and he was holding a two foot tall arrangement wrapped in a plastic bag, the contents of which I couldn't quite make out. Whitney had asked me the previous evening if I would be mortally embarrassed if she sent me flowers at work, so I suppose in hindsight I should have got a bit of a clue from that, but I didn't think that she would have plans already in motion. I took it back to my desk and picked up the phone again. It was a present for our eleventh month of being married, which was something that I had hardly realized - time has gone very fast this year.
It was only when Whitney told me to look again that I realized that they weren't flowers - they were fruit cut to look like flowers and arranged in a bouquet-like fashion in a basket. These are done by a company called Edible Arrangements, and they're really quite spectacular things - I hadn't seen anything like them before. The size of those photos doesn't do them justice, by the way - even the small ones are absolutely enormous. After being admired for a bit, it was carried through to the cold server room so that it could survive the day (being easily bigger than the office refrigerator).
I got it out again to try and work my way through some of it for lunch, but it was a losing battle and I'm sure that it was growing back as fast as the rest of the office (all both of them) and I were picking at it - after having it on my desk for an hour or so I was beginning to feel quite ill, and even though it looked like most of one side had been devoured, when it was turned around it was just as big as before. So back into the server room it went, and I spent a while being poked by its sharp spines while trying to make it less side-heavy to make it easier to transport home.
It wouldn't have been easy no matter how small it was, because the station was packed with a huge number of Japanese tourists for some reason. They didn't seem to be heading for a train at all, just milling about and taking up most of the space outside the ticket gates. However, just like a Volkswagen Beetle, with my compact size I was able to pick my way easily through the jam towards the stairs.
A train was already there when I got to the top of the stairs, and knowing that the arrangement in my hand would be getting more rotten in the heat by the minute, I knew I had to make a rush for it - I leapt down the stairs, hit the ground running, losing the box supporting the basket along the way, and with a triumphant (and entirely involuntary) cry of something resembling "Hahy'bastaad" as I hurtled towards the rapidly closing train door, I leapt through it with an inch to spare and landed in the laps of two heavily armed police officers, who must have thought that I was some sort of insane British fruit bomber.
After that, the rest of the journey passed without incident, apart from everyone I passed in Park Street looking down at the colourful arrangement in my left hand. Most of it's still in the fridge - you can at least say that it's good value, as I think there's easily about $50 worth of fruit on the thing. And, as we discovered when we dissembled it on the coffee table, the central structural point that supports it all is... a lettuce. Even the base is edible. It's a stroke of genius.
I stood up to see him looking around for someone who looked like a David Newton, and he was holding a two foot tall arrangement wrapped in a plastic bag, the contents of which I couldn't quite make out. Whitney had asked me the previous evening if I would be mortally embarrassed if she sent me flowers at work, so I suppose in hindsight I should have got a bit of a clue from that, but I didn't think that she would have plans already in motion. I took it back to my desk and picked up the phone again. It was a present for our eleventh month of being married, which was something that I had hardly realized - time has gone very fast this year.
It was only when Whitney told me to look again that I realized that they weren't flowers - they were fruit cut to look like flowers and arranged in a bouquet-like fashion in a basket. These are done by a company called Edible Arrangements, and they're really quite spectacular things - I hadn't seen anything like them before. The size of those photos doesn't do them justice, by the way - even the small ones are absolutely enormous. After being admired for a bit, it was carried through to the cold server room so that it could survive the day (being easily bigger than the office refrigerator).I got it out again to try and work my way through some of it for lunch, but it was a losing battle and I'm sure that it was growing back as fast as the rest of the office (all both of them) and I were picking at it - after having it on my desk for an hour or so I was beginning to feel quite ill, and even though it looked like most of one side had been devoured, when it was turned around it was just as big as before. So back into the server room it went, and I spent a while being poked by its sharp spines while trying to make it less side-heavy to make it easier to transport home.
It wouldn't have been easy no matter how small it was, because the station was packed with a huge number of Japanese tourists for some reason. They didn't seem to be heading for a train at all, just milling about and taking up most of the space outside the ticket gates. However, just like a Volkswagen Beetle, with my compact size I was able to pick my way easily through the jam towards the stairs.
A train was already there when I got to the top of the stairs, and knowing that the arrangement in my hand would be getting more rotten in the heat by the minute, I knew I had to make a rush for it - I leapt down the stairs, hit the ground running, losing the box supporting the basket along the way, and with a triumphant (and entirely involuntary) cry of something resembling "Hahy'bastaad" as I hurtled towards the rapidly closing train door, I leapt through it with an inch to spare and landed in the laps of two heavily armed police officers, who must have thought that I was some sort of insane British fruit bomber.
After that, the rest of the journey passed without incident, apart from everyone I passed in Park Street looking down at the colourful arrangement in my left hand. Most of it's still in the fridge - you can at least say that it's good value, as I think there's easily about $50 worth of fruit on the thing. And, as we discovered when we dissembled it on the coffee table, the central structural point that supports it all is... a lettuce. Even the base is edible. It's a stroke of genius.
