Bob the Pickle

A long time ago, in a Kroger far, far away, there lived a pickle named Bob. A sweet gherkin to be precise. All Bob ever wanted was for he and his friends to be bought by a human family so that they could be loved forever. Each day, Bob watched as people came and went, buying pickles, until Bob's jar was the very last one. Finally, someone picked Bob's jar off the shelf. Bob was more happy than he had ever been.

Hardly able to wait any longer, Bob grew more and more excited as the car drove him to his new home. However, when they got to the house, instead of being loved by his new family, he and his friends were put in the refrigerator!!!! Bob couldn't have been more confused. Why wasn't his new family loving him like he thought they would?

For many long days, Bob's pickle friends would sit in the refrigerator waiting for nothing. But not Bob. He waited and waited for something, anything, to happen. But each day was the same thing. The humans would open the fridge, look around, and every once in a while, they would grab the pickle jar down from the shelf, never bothering to pick Bob out of the jar and love him.

Bob waited in the jar until he was the last pickle left, but the humans never picked him. He even started growing a goatee to get their attention.

The humans were unimpressed. In fact, they hardly even noticed it until a few days after he had started working on it. The most surprising part about it, was that once the humans saw Bob's goatee, they made disgusted faces, and THREW BOB IN THE TRASH!!!!!!!!

Bob was heartbroken. He had worked so hard on that goatee!

A few days later, the trashcan was taken to the dump, and after that, it was scooped up and put on a barge. Of course, at the time, Bob had no idea what a barge was. However, he waited patiently for whatever was to come next.

Soon, he saw a glimmer of light a few feet away on the barge, which of course is a lot of distance if you are a sweet gherkin. 

Since Bob didn't have anything to do, he walked, though it was more like hopping, towards the light.

Once he finally got there, he saw that the light was reflecting off of one of those flippy, on-the-go mirrors, which I will refer to as a pocket mirror.

"Ummm, hi" Bob said. "I'm Bob the pickle."

"Oh, hi!" said the mirror. "My name is Sally. It's nice to meet you," she added with a smile.

Sally was pink, but with cracks all over her mirror.

"What are you doing here?" Bob wondered. "You don't look like trash."

"Well, you see Bob, I used to be owned by a model, but one day she tripped near the street while checking her makeup, and dropped me into the middle of the road. Then I got ran over by a car and cracked." Sally said sadly.

"That's terrible!" Bob replied sympathetically.

"Yes, it is," Sally replied, "But I am moving past that now. What about you? Have you handled being thrown away well?" she asked sympathetically.

"That's the thing," Bob said, "I don't know why I was thrown away. I was bought with my friends a few weeks ago and the humans took all of my friends out of the jar to love them, but left me. I just can't understand it. I even started growing a goatee for them, but the moment they saw it, they threw me away." Bob said sadly.

"Oh!" Sally exclaimed in shock. "You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?" Bob asked.

"Oh dear! Why do I have to be the one to explain this?" Sally asked herself warily. "Well, you see Bob," Sally began, "when people buy pickles, it's not usually to love them and care for them, but to... eat them. And your goatee, well, I think it's wonderful, but humans naturally wouldn't be so fond of it because it's made of mold and humans tend to stay away from that."

Bob was in shock. How could he have gone so long without knowing this! And to think he had spent so much time wanting out of that jar! Suddenly, Bob had a horrible realization. "But Sally!" he gasped. "I was the last of my friends in that jar! Did they get..." he couldn't bear to say it aloud, "...eaten?"

"I would hope not," said Sally, "but there's really no way to tell. We can only hope they're okay."

Bob was very sad at hearing this, but before he could truly process it, the barge came to a sudden stop. Everything in the barge was dumped into more trucks while Bob and Sally did everything in their power to stay together. The trucks eventually dumped the two, along with the rest of the trash into a reserved part of the Grand Canyon, which wasn't so grand in these parts because there was no room anywhere else to keep the trash.

It wasn't exactly ideal living conditions, but Bob and Sally were happy nevertheless and lived together in the Grand Canyon finding more bits of trash to show love to and from that day on, each and every piece of trash in the Grand Canyon had someone to love them and someone to love.

The End