Read by Michael Flamel

PPeas don’t like me. I mean it.

It’s not my fault. I like them. There’s nothing more symbolic of early-summer gar­dening success than grazing along a row of twining pea vines, pulling open a fat, round pod, and popping those fresh green pearls of flavor into your mouth. No sir, I like garden peas just fine.

But they don’t like me. There are plenty of people who don’t like certain vegetables. George Bush doesn’t like broccoli. Babe Ruth never cared for asparagus. Me, I’d wouldn’t be upset if every Brussels sprouts plant went the way of the dinosaurs. (“News Flash! Mysterious asteroid strikes planet! Spreads fine dust toxic to all Brussel sprouts!”)

So I guess it’s not unfair if, once in a while, a vegetable turns around and decides it doesn’t like some humans. Peas have certainly done that with me: For me, they just won’t grow. It doesn’t matter if I plant them early or late, deep or shallow. If I water them with clockwork regularity or leave their moisture to the skies. Why, I can go uphill to the Agers, help them set pea seeds in their garden, rush home, and lay down my own seeds that same afternoon. A month later, the Agers have a living hedge rapidly kudzuing its way up their chicken wire. My vines are frail and thin as the hair on a balding scalp.

It’s not fair! Why do they pick on me? What have I ever done to them? All right, all right, there was the summer after high school when I worked 12- and 24-hour shifts to help har­vest farm-sized fields of peas. Sure, I said a few things about them that summer—say, at three o’clock in the morning when my tractor broke down in the middle of a damp, night-black field. Or when some of the lifetime migrant workers would burst, drunk and rowdy, back into our 20-bunk barracks just when I was falling asleep. Or when I’d smell that unremovable green pea grime that had filled the crevices of my fingerprints.

But that was decades ago. Surely the peas don’t remember that?! And it can’t be all those canned peas my mother force-fed me in my youth, limp, lifeless rounds that tasted like the moist droppings of an anaerobically created swamp creature. My sister cleverly hid hers in her napkin, but her less inventive kid brother—me—actually ate them, fighting all the while my system’s urge to instantly return them to the plate. That shouldn’t count. I was just a kid then, and those were canned peas.

My wife thinks I should stick to corn, beans, tomatoes—vegetables that cotton to me just fine. But I don’t want to concede that peas and I will never get along. I guess I’m hoping they’ll eventually outgrow their dislike of me. Maybe if I start to shave real close, try to dress a little more neatly, drop the slang (and occasional inappropriate exple­tive) from my speech …

I’m going to keep on trying. After all, I have feelings, too. ❖