Best Fronds

Story Sent in by John:

I bought Charlene a small bouquet of flowers before our first date. I normally wouldn't but we had talked online for a while and I felt like we knew each other well enough for me to do that.

She was very happy with them and carried them around with her as we walked around a park before dinner.

Something queer went on, though. At least twice as we walked, I thought I caught her whispering into the flowers. At first I thought that I was the crazy one. She's just smelling them, I thought.

No. She was bona fide whispering to the flowers. I caught words being spoken. I didn't mention anything at first, and when I caught her doing it again, I asked her a non-related question, just to see what she would do.

She stopped talking to the flowers immediately and addressed me. A little strange but again, we had spoken for a while before meeting. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Right before we made it to the cafe where we were going to do dinner, I could swear I caught her saying something to the flowers like, "Fa fa fa, ta ta ta, ha ha ha, nyork nyork nyork."

"Are you talking to the flowers?" I asked.

"No!" she said, with no further explanation.

At dinner, whenever I looked away for whatever reason, out of the corner of my eye I could see her lean toward her flowers and move her lips. For all intents and purposes, it was like she was really talking to them. As soon as I snapped my head back in her direction, she stopped.

Finally I asked her, "Having a good conversation?"

"With who?"

"Your flowers."

"Yes, thank you."

Ah. An admission! But if I thought that things would soon clear up, I was mistaken. She simply left it at that. Yes. I'm talking to my flowers. What about it?

I asked, "Are they talking back?"

She said, "No. They're flowers. But I know they can hear me."

"How do you know? They don't have ears."

"Yeah, but they're flowers."

Again, an answer that wasn't really an answer. She wasn't forthcoming with anything else, and I wasn't about to indulge her strange behavior anymore. The one thing that changed, however, was that she no longer attempted to hide it. She leaned in and whispered to her flowers as I watched. She'd even give me smiling glances as if sharing some private joke with her plant life.

I hope she had a good time with them, because she sure didn't see me anymore.