Only one of the many tomato plants growing all summer in my little garden-patch has ripened – the rest remain green. Granted the unripened are beautiful, photogenic shades of lime-green, grape-green, Moldovan-green, but green is not red is not ripe. Whose failure is it: Mother Nature? The sun or lack of? Could it be that a my tomato plants were strangled by morning glory trailers twisting around their vines having jumped from the iron fence dividing my patch from the Greek Church to the south? Is the failure simply me – one of many failures in my longish life?
I.E.:
(1) Contact lenses
(2) Marriage
(3) Bed making
(4) Fitted sheet folding
(5) Analytic geometry
(6) Fasting
(7) Perfect spelling
(8) Chess
(9) Foreign languages
(10) Sushi
(11) Flossing
(12) Sailing
(13) Tennis
(14) Diving off of a high board
(15) Changing the world for the better
(16) Remembering to bring an umbrella
(17) Kayaking
Why or how I’ve failed?
(1) I could not stop rubbing my eyes
(2) No help from fate
(3) I’ve tried but the bed never looks as if an adult had a hand it it
(4) If my life depended on it – I still couldn’t properly fold a fitted sheet
(5) To this day I still dream that I’ve forgotten to take the final exam
(6) Deprivation is not a strong suit
(7) Almost any way I spell a word it seems correct and incorrect at once
(8) Am a pawn grabber
(9) Impossible once alcohol and drugs had induced brain damage – alas
(10) As sophisticated as I think I am, I’m really not sophisticated at all
(11) I mean to but sometimes days go by – am better with the proxy brush
(12) Too much ducking
(13) Too old and myopic when I first tried
(14) Would climb up but just couldn’t make myself dive head first
(15) Didn’t know where to begin – still don’t except to pick up litter like wooden ice cream sticks for luck – touch wood
(16) Essentially, I like being rained on
(17) I’m loyal to the canoe unto death
*****
PS
I have been advised to a) gather green tomatoes b) add a lemon c) find a paper bag d) insert all into said paper bag d) put in dark place. [See evidence of steps a, b and c below] Will report results.
. 
Is that all?
No.
No. and No.
Pragmatic-ly I’d say the answer to the tomato problem is half sour tomatoes my dad’s specialty.
I want to print out your failure and reason for failure lists without the numbers and mix them up, make a game of it.
Perhaps you really failed at, Tennis because you didn’t like being rained on. Or perhaps you failed at bed-making because alcohol and drugs had induced brain damage.
Or marriage was an impossibility because you are a pawn grabber.
Just saying, Hanne
Dear Johanne, perhaps we should be more concerned about our own mistakes, no? Just saying.
I like Johanne’s idea! It could be the basis of a new board game: instead of zooming around the board accumulating shiny offspring, property and cash, you rack up failures as you land on them, drawing reasons for failures from a stack of small cards; if the failure and the reason on the card can’t be made to match up by any stretch of the imagination, then the player doesn’t get the point. I’ve been toying for ages with the idea of sending out one of those round-robin end-of-year letters but, instead of listing the fabulous achievements of oneself and one’s family, the letter describes in grim detail all the personal flops and fiascos of the preceding twelve months. I have a feeling recipients would get a kick out of it on account of the novely factor if nothing else. It could start a whole new trend.
I’m willing to cut cards it you’ll fill them out?
That would make a fabulous board game!
I was always terrible at those printed sheets in school where we were supposed to draw lines from one group of actions to a list of nouns or whatever. It was supposed to be so obvious but never was for me. I would disagree with the teacher when she marked my papers as wrong. When I read the prompts I would see a whole story that Could be instead of the obvious school-bus connects with school building or rain falling connects with umbrella. The teacher must have thought me a little shit but I was just clueless. We play that round robin between us don’t we? I sat on Alison’s sofa last week and analyzed my failings afterwards I felt lighter then I had in months.
Celebrate our failures! Especially the small daily ones. Removing the Martha Stewart mask and revealing the crumbling foundations in our lives.
I love your imagination, dear Johanne. Always have, always will !
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
Thomas A. Edison
Well … I guess I haven’t either.
Considering the numerous shades of green, perhaps your tomatoes could be considered an aesthetic success.
The single ripe tomato will share the same fate as so many other fruits. It shall end up in a salad, a sandwich, or be consumed whole. And that will be the end.
But the other tomatoes, the green tomatoes, have succeeded in other ways. They are very photogenic tomatoes. They have sparked the train of thought that resulted in this blog entry, which makes them inspirational tomatoes! Tomatoes whose seeming failure to ripen was really just a step in the path of their happy destinies.
Yes at least fifteen times. And … I think you are psychic as my next posting has “sparked the train” and will be set on a train.
Re the failure of not speaking foreign languages: You speak the language of the heart that makes you agreeable before God and the people. How do you do that? I have no problem in failing in five different languages, incl. one dead. That makes me doubt about your other “failures”, Queen Midas. Only saying …