Story Sent in by Johnny:
I love to garden and I grow tulips, geraniums, roses, and more in my front yard. I spend a lot of time on them and I don't usually pick them. I met Tracy in my office building. She worked for a company a floor above and we'd frequently see each other in the stairwells or elevators or just passing through hallways. I thought she was cute and funny and so I asked her out to coffee.
Coffee went great. I subsequently asked her if she wanted to hang out one Saturday and she said she'd meet me at my house.
When she arrived she rang my doorbell and I opened it to discover her standing there with nearly half of my garden's flowers all bunched up in a giant bouquet in her hands. "I brought you flowers!" she said.
I lost it. "You picked them from my garden!? What the hell? I didn't want them picked! I was growing them! How dare you pick them!"
I was harsh but she deserved it. Who goes picking flowers from a yard that isn't theirs? She dropped the flowers on the porch, burst into tears, and ran away like a stupid little girl. No apology. Just like that.
She took special pains to avoid me at work after that and I never acknowledged her existence again.
This is the second story I've read on here about a woman who picks a guy's beloved flowers and decides to present them as a gift.
ReplyDeleteWhen that happens I wonder if it's the same person possibly trying to achieve a different, more positive result from the same behavior. Psychopathology loves company.
DeleteWhat's with all these femme dudes growing flowers?! REAL men grow CROPS, like corn to make whiskey, or something of that nature... not primroses!
DeleteSteve: Flowers in the front vegetables in the back.
DeleteFor the record it is awesome that the dude gardens
DeleteI'm married now but I would have been all impressed by that.
Vag time > flowers, bro...
ReplyDeleteI think it was a valid reaction. As someone who routinely murders every plant she tries to grow by accident, I can say with confidence that flowers are difficult to maintain. By picking all his flowers, she literally ripped hours and hours of hard work and careful care to shreds and shoved the dying effort into his face expecting him to be happy about it. He reacted to the loss in an honest, expected way. She was a child in a woman's body, and he's the only one who dodged a bullet.
ReplyDeleteIt'd be like kicking his dog and expecting him to be happy about it.
DeleteI like women's bodies...
DeleteHis work isn't dead, most flowers won't come true from seed anyway. All of his plants will still be alive and will boom again next year or, in the case of the geraniums and roses, next week. People make bad decisions and part of being a man is not overreacting to them. He should have expressed his disapproval in a more constructive manner.
Deleteipdar, so for you, you can only be a man if you refuse to react honestly, or at all, to something you worked hard for being damaged? If someone came and cut your hair, you wouldn't even blink? or no, you'd be contructive. but what does a "constructive" reaction even mean? was op supposed to sit her down and explain to her exactly what she did wrong and why it wasn't ok? no. men are allowed to be "harsh", to react to sudden loss even if "it'll come back NEXT YEAR". if I ever meet you, I'll be sure to cut a sleeve off of your shirt, since you can just sew it back on, or shave all the hair off any animals you own, since it'll grow back and be normal again by the end of the year. I won't expect you to react of course, unless it's constructive.
DeleteBriana, part of that depends on whether or not you had agreed to date me. We all regard people with what kind of value they have to us. If my kid shaved the dog then I know that yelling at them wouldn't solve anything, why should I yell at anyone else? If you came up to me and ripped off a sleeve from my shirt, well that would be a little different because that would look like assault as it was happening and I would fight you instead. But if I knew otherwise, if you grabbed a loose thread and the sleeve came off I would be disappointed. I would know that you might not have intended the act to be malicious and I would be very disappointed that the shirt was ruined, but I know that I shouldn't hate you for it if I didn't think you did it with malice. She clearly didn't act with malice here so anger is not the appropriate response.
DeleteMY GOSH A VALID ARGUMENT YOU HAVE EARNED MY RESPECT.
DeleteSeriously, well done. I apologize for the frustration clearly present in my previous comment, as much of it stemmed from a difficult week and not from your actual comment. I also take back what I said and now agree with you to a point. While I still believe he was within his right to be upset and show those feelings to her, he could have acted with less severity. May that woman have learned her lesson and may his flowers regrow quickly.
@Ipdar - then what, pray tell, IS the appropriate response to someone destroying your property? Tracy may not have been malicious, but what she did was still wrong and stupid, and it's perfectly valid to be upset and/or angry about it. Especially since the flowers were the result of the OP's hard work. I don't get why you wouldn't yell at your kid for shaving the dog, either - it's mean and possibly even cruel to the dog (who knows how many nicks and cuts it may have gotten, not to mention the loss of its natural defenses against dirt, bugs and parasites), and at the very least, the kid needs to realize that what he did was wrong and has consequences. And hopefully, the hypothetical kid and Tracy will both think twice before they do something stupid like that again.
DeleteFrankly, if all he did was make her cry, then in my opinion she got off pretty easy.
She went out of her way to destroy OP's property and expected him to appreciate it. He didn't overreact at all.
ReplyDeleteThey are just flowers. At least it wasn't some strange who came by to pick them and never say anything, that's even worse. But flowers are only temporary anyway and must die someday. If my date had picked my flowers I'd be disappointed but I wouldn't want to drive her off. Now he has no flowers AND no date.
ReplyDeleteHa, he wanted to deflower her, but she beat him to it!
ReplyDeletethis ^^
DeleteI dunno, I think I'm with Kate. He obviously spends a lot of time and hard work making his garden look nice,obviously it's important to him so I'm not surprised he lost it when someone just destroyed it. Yes flowers do die but you can plant different things that bloom at different times so your garden always has some flowers in it.
ReplyDeleteI'd want to beat her with the flowers. If she had dug up my plants I'd use them at her funeral. -_-
ReplyDeleteIf you garden you would probably agree THAT IS NOT OKAY
ReplyDelete