How Sunflowers Can Save the World
Or at least yours and mine
One time a rock decided to take himself for granted. His girlfriend was shocked. “You’re such a special rock!” she assured him.
“No, I’m just a pebble in the river,” he moaned.
At that moment, a 12 year old boy picked him up and threw him. He landed in a field of tall yellow sunflowers, who all turned to see who the newcomer was.
“I’m lost!” he again moaned. “My girlfriend is in the river, so wet, and I can’t help her at all!”
The sunflowers conferred amongst themselves, worriedly trying to find a solution. Just then, a bright flash occurred high in the overhead sky. A Killer Drone, used for nothing but impersonal murder, had escaped her controllers in the far-off Nevada mountains and had fired her two fast missiles directly towards the Sun, where Icarus intercepted them, grabbing them with both firm hands, and using their blinding orange thrust to land safely back home, completely upsetting someone’s tragic Greek tale.
Now, if that wasn’t enough, I found out at the very same moment that my favorite Netflix superhero series had been cancelled! What could I do?!!
Mortals cannot answer questions this difficult or steep, so Icarus decided he would help, forgetting momentarily that he was mortal still.
“Call that rock right now!” he told me. “Just dial Sunflower 999!”
I did. And why not? Without my favorite Netflix show, life was rapidly becoming as meaningless as my job! And that’s a place you don’t want to go.
A happy bright sunflower answered. “Is the Rock there?” I asked.
“Just a second, I’ll put him on.”
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Well, one thing led to 12 others. We both immediately saw we weren’t that different, after all, both unhappy with life and what it conspicuously refused to offer. I drove out to the sunflower field, where all those tall glowing ladies, happy to see me, too, enthralled both of us with tales of adventure, joy, and heroism as night fell, and streamers of stars miraculously watched us in the strange twinkling high darkness, with only a pack of coyotes, thrilled by their hunt’s ecstasy, celebrating endlessly, for awhile, then suddenly stopping, as if they were gone.
The next morning I returned that traveling rock to his girlfriend.
“I’m so happy to see you again!” she told him, wet as a stream tumbled boulder can be.
He, of course, was exceptionally hard.
Myself, I returned to this keyboard, where I’m typing now, eagerly awaiting a new Netflix series, which, the ladies assured me, is all about growing sunflowers. I think I can learn a lot.
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I© “John” Lesly Levin 2021
P.S. My grandmother Tillie taught me how to crack salted roasted sunflower seeds with my teeth and eat them, while playing poker with her on a hot Arkansas summer’s night. She had learned how (probably both) in Czarist Russia as a child.
