"MEMOIR OF A POTATO"


You can find my life somewhere between the poultry section and the condiments aisle of an ordinary grocery store.
And just as ordinary as all other miscellaneous consumables, you will find my life.
Ordinarily, yet neatly wrapped, in a secure plastic enclosure,
This life, locked away by a mere twist of a vinyl thread, never to receive any unwanted or needed visitors: critters or crawlers, company or friends.
Inside this encased plastic, I watch from behind the printed nutrition fact bars, gazing at the other perishables around me, making out what I can, like an animal in a zoo.
They come around. They come near. They come within a grasp.
Yet, they never come here.
For some reason no one really needs a sack of potatoes.
Heck, why choose a sack of potatoes when an inviting box of Uncle Ben’s pre-mashed potato packs is waiting to be heated in under a  minute and thirty seconds.
No one seems to have time in this fast moving world of instant meals and precooked preservatives to take your potato and mash it like they used to.
Like all other items in this market, I have an expiration date.
How do I know?
Because I can see it staring at me from behind the plastic, reading what appears to be the day of my death.
As this unsettling label haunts me I continue to gaze on, at what appears to be the hollywood of the grocery store, the aristocracy of consumption.
This section, constantly nurtured and tended, is watered every hour on the hour, and carefully moved so as not to bruise a single member.
They seem to be visited everyday, for their pure source of vitamins and nutrients attracts all appetites.
Their value comes by the pound, whereas I am a mere fixed price per sack.
Oh how I wish to be a fruit, or even a not too distant cousin, the vegetable.
However, I am just a potato.
I am rough on the outside. Soft on the inside, once heated of course.
I age every minute. I see the wrinkles on my skin. I feel my insides slowly rotting away.
My time here on this aisle will slowly come to its end, as the newly appointed pubescent    will haul me away, in my plastic coffin.
Despite this inevitable end, there is one thing I will always remember.
I am a potato, and like everyone else in this world, whether potato or fruit, are eternal resting place will be the ground.
Whether the road may begin through the oral cavity and end through the rectum, to a watery slide, commenced by the flick of a handle, or straight to the garbage heaps like a potato, the end is all the same.