I have a squash problem.

It is not the normal problem people have with squash, which is usually along the lines of “I planted 27 squash seeds and got 27 squash vines and now they are organizing and forming little unions, mafias and gang alliances.  I need you, my fellow Americans, to take them before they overtake my tomato plants and launch an offensive into my neighbor's yard.”

Neither is it the problem where some godless, soulless human being invites you to dinner and tries to trick you into eating a boiled stringy pile of pulp that was apparently squash once.

No, I have a squash problem because I moved to Virginia after I graduated and the universe laughed and told me I didn’t need a job.  This squash came from Hudsonville, Michigan; a charming area that produces ice cream and glitter and is 15 minutes away from every friend I have except my dogs.

So now my acorn squash has feelings, apparently.  Which is actually terrible, because I ate his friends over the course of the week.  If anything, he is a victim and doesn’t view me as a friend even though I cuddled with him last night.  (Not really, squashes are shit cuddlers, I cuddled with Bruce my stuffed penguin instead.)

I tried to eat him yesterday, but then I looked at him and imagined how terrified and lonely he must be as a Michigan squash in Stafford Virginia.  And then I imagined my life without the squash, severed from Michigan beyond any and all connection.  What if I could never find another Hudsonville acorn squash?  What would I do without this tiny piece of chemically significant vegetation?  Never see sunshine again, probably. I would mourn my squash in the basement.  I would build a mourning fort using my weight lifting gear and subsist on cardboard box pieces and acorn squash.

The future aside (I always pretend time is ending in about 4 seconds) what the hell am I going to do if it rots?  I look at it as the equivalent of a golden unicorn egg, only one that has feelings, since most unicorns are cold and uncaring.

This isn’t the first time I have become emotionally involved with a vegetable.  Over the span of my youth, I fell in love with several potatoes, and sobbed with despair as one by one they rotted, and my mom had to throw them away so I didn’t get ebola or beriberi.  I imagined them rotting in the dump, feeling lost and abandoned.

And that's why I have a squash problem.