Hey, Cornucopia

Hey, Cornucopia.

Well, look who’s back. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You’re back, as usual. This is your time of year to show up. The thing is, I don’t know anyone who gets you at all.

No one knows where you are the rest of the year. No one knows how you start showing up around Thanksgiving. Yet there you are, spilling a bunch of fruit and vegetables out.

I remember the first time I saw you. You were on a bulletin board in my first grade classroom. Even at that young age I wondered why anyone would make a useless basket such as you – a basket destined to spill its contents. I still have no good answer to that question.

“You fat Penguin!”

When my curiosity got the better of me during our first grade encounter, I asked the nun that was teaching the class what you were. She said you were Cornucopia, The Horn of Plenty. Then she whacked me with a yard stick in case I was having impure thoughts or something.

Later in life I wondered about you again.  In the interest of safety, I decided against asking a nun. I looked into it on my own.

According to legend,  the Greek god, Zeus, was raised by a goat. While playing with the goat, Zeus broke its horn off. He felt bad about it and gave the horn back to the goat with the supernatural power to give whoever possessed it whatever they wished for. If you think about it, he pretty much doomed his goat/mother to a life of being hassled by greedy people trying to get her horn.

I am pretty sure that this story is a lie.

Yet, here you are again, Cornucopia. Lying around all day with your vegetables hanging out.

Since the Zeus and his goat/mother story is a lie, I figure your whole existence can be replaced by another lie. Who better to create that lie than me?

Cornucopia is the Latin word for “basket of futility”. You received that name because you are incapable of standing on your own or of keeping your contents from spilling out. You exist solely as a drawing slapped on Thanksgiving decorations. You contribute nothing but confusion and a jumbled mess of vegetables that someone else has to clean up. If you were at all practical, someone would at some point would have uttered the sentence “please bring me that cornucopia.” That hasn’t happened.

Cornucopia, next November, please consider staying wherever it is you spend the other eleven months of the year.

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