"Swamp Thing"

Hello.

Back here.

Yes, it's the orchid you left to die in this back room.

Hey, little missy, did you REALLY ever think that you were going to remember to come back here and water me? Seriously?

Like the way you remembered your sister's birthday? Or that yesterday was the day to leave the gate open for the Meter Reader?

Have you even started thinking about Mother's Day?

Then you can imagine why I'm hardly surprised.

Or thirsty.

Just so very thirsty.

Can we go back down memory lane a moment?

Remember the day I arrived at your desk with those three beautiful blooms? How everyone came by and admired me, asked who gave me to you? Wasn't that nice? Didn't that make your day?

Do you remember a little while later when the petals started falling off and you started asking around the office to see when an orchid would bloom again?

I can tell you that answer is "never" if you stick one in a back conference room and don't water it.

Do you sense anger? Rage?

Good!

You can count me as one outraged cymbidium nagifolium!

And though the cleaning crew comes in every night to dust me, they never think to water me. Perhaps they think someone is watering me weekly. Perhaps they are afraid I'll be over watered.

Fat chance!

I am an orchid, people. My ancestors lived in the Okefenokee!

Would someone just throw the day-old coffee on me? Please?

Do you know what it's like to see a bunch of people laughing and drinking their 32-ounce containers of Smart Water and be shriveling up and dying of sunstroke?

Not that I blame it all on you, as most of this blame lies squarely on the shoulders of florists.

How those people can raise us in ideal humidity, get us to bloom, then knowingly send us off to our certain deaths by shipping us to some clodpoll who doesn't know a forsythia from a hole in the ground, is beyond me.

Oh perfidy, thy name is Enchanted Florist!

But back to you. Dearie, when you visit other desks and see a warm, happy philodendron, spiky marginata, or leafy golden pothos, don't you ever stop to think, "Say, that's funny, plants are supposed to be green?"

Or even begin to wonder what's become of me?

I've even stopped photosynthesizing.

It's like plant menopause.

No wonder you don't have pets. You are a nuisance to all living things who step in your wake.

Step carefully. The day will come, madam, when the plants will exact their revenge on you. Perhaps you will find yourself alone in the woods and wonder what that odd creaking sound is. And you may find out too late when an elder Sequoia falls with the force of ten thousand men, crushing you under its blood red bark!

Hah!

Take that, bush butcher!

In the meantime...

Water me. Please.

I'm not just kidding around here.

Seriously.

Yours truly,

Mort, Your Forgotten Orchid in the Back