There's a facile theological conundrum that asks if God could make a rock so heavy that he could not lift it. Slightly related, and easier to answer: Can a wife buy a pumpkin so large that her husband cannot get it up the stairs?
"I got a pumpkin," my wife said last Saturday. Great; 'tis the season, as no one says for Halloween. "It's big." Great! You gourd, girl. "It's really big. Can you get it out of the trunk?"
A wifely request, a test of strength to which no man can say no. After all, this is why I go to the gym and lift weights — so I can drastically overestimate my strength, and snap every nerve in my spine!
When I looked in the trunk I asked if it had been placed there by a fella they call "Man-Mountain Murphy," because this thing looked like a State Fair blue-ribbon winner that had its award stripped when it tested positive for steroids. I checked the bumper of the car to see if she'd driven home with the back end of the car scraping the road, shedding sparks. I might be able to get it out with a crane, and then maybe roll it up the hill to the porch like Sisyphus.
I figured that I might be able to get it out with a crane, and then maybe roll it up the hill to the porch like Sisyphus. Instead, I lifted it up, and I paid for it dearly the next day with twangs and aches.
Next step: Buy seven more pumpkins and stack them on top. Why? I have no idea. But stacking is now the new pumpkin paradigm, I've learned.
Arranging them in a row is passé. The current vogue requires stacking, especially if you wish to display them on Instagram and send your friends into a funk of bilious envy over your curated gourd pile.
Common lore has it that jack-o-lanterns are meant to ward off evil spirits. But they're actually intended to ward off ... Jack. As the story goes, Jack was a surly, cheap Irish drunk who was banned from heaven because he was disrespectful to an angel — put on the no-fly list because he cheesed off a flight attendant, if you like — and then he angered the Devil, who 86'd him from Hell. He was thus condemned to roam the world, with only a coal in a hollowed-out turnip to light his way.
Irish immigrants to the States transplanted the tale to pumpkins, which were easier to eviscerate, and used the glowing gourds to scare off Jack — which presumes he immigrated, as well, instead of staggering around County Cork with a hot turnip.
I think Jack's probably caught on by now, and is not frightened by the faces leering in the dark. Even if they're stacked.
If you google pumpkin stacking, by the way, you'll be informed that you should impale the stack with a dowel to keep them together. I suggest using the seasonal cliché to come, the Inexplicable Birch Log, then letting the pumpkins rot and feed the squirrels, leaving just the log to inform everyone that it is now the holidays.
We may not hollow out the enormous pumpkin, because I think you could house a family of four in there, and who knows what that will do to our property taxes. Which, by the way, are due tomorrow. My back no longer hurts, but the right back pocket — ach, such a pain.
