Produce Bully

[Rod Drake]

“No one wants a puny little banana like you,” said the fat, ripe, perfectly round tomato bully, “which is why the human broke you off the bunch she bought today.” 

“Face it, you’re a loser, a sickly, ugly yellow little waste of potassium,” the tomato continued, then laughed wickedly as the small banana cringed and wished it would stop.

It was night at the closed Beckwith’s Family Grocery Store and as was customary for the past week, the tomato bully was insulting and demeaning all of the other fruits and vegetables in the small produce section; tonight it was the tiny banana that bore the brunt of the attack.

“Tomorrow you will over-ripen into a shriveled, brown-spotted soft mess, and the manager will toss you in the spoiled produce heap,” the tomato cracked, as all the other fruit and vegetables shivered at that worst of all fates, unchosen and discarded with the trash.

When the store opened the next day, a young woman reached for a bunch of grapes and accidentally brushed the prominent tomato bully, sending it tumbling down the produce rack and ski-jumping over the curved length of the tiny banana to splat into a wet, red mess on the tile floor.  None of the other fruit and vegetables on the rack said a thing, but they all enjoyed the ironic joke—the tomato had paid for its meanness by slipping on a banana peel—it was the perfect comeuppance.

[Bill Floyd]

Original!

[Angela]

Cute tale.  Bet there are some real folks out there who are living this.