Just Do It

I love my newest additions to my fake pumpkin collection. I saw one in a display but couldn't find them anywhere else in my local craft store. I nabbed a passing employee and asked her about them.

You can't buy our display pumpkin. You have to make one yourself, she said.

Rats.

Oh, it's easy. Just take this grapevine pumpkin and put these multicolor lights inside.

I picked up a twiggy looking pumpkin and gingerly tried to carefully thread the brown wire and amber colored light set past the curved vines.

No, no, she said impatiently. You're trying too hard. Just grab handfuls of the lights and stuff them in there. You can't plan it. You just have to do it.

So I did.

I sat back to admire the effect and was amazed that it was so simple.

I suppose there's some profound life lesson in the craft store employee's advice, hm? That the pumpkin and the lights are a metaphor for life: to be successful one must seize the raw materials for happiness and thrust oneself headlong into the twiggy future....

Nah. Sometimes a pumpkin is just a pumpkin.