Sitting on a shelf, cozied up with
my family under a fluorescent glow of lights, I thought to myself This is the life. Sure, it was a bit crowded in the little
box we lived in, which we shared with two other families (making fifteen of us
in all), but we never had to worry about any of our family or friends leaving
us. We stuck together, literally. If you’re confused right now, don’t worry. It will all become clear soon enough. I hope my story will help you to make a
change in your…er…diet.
Most of the time, my life is sweet
and care-free, but there always is the fear lurking beneath the veneer of
happiness…the fear of being bought. This
fear especially rises to the surface in the spring. Usually when one thinks of spring, he or she
thinks of life and renewal, but for me spring means one thing only:
Easter.
Easter is a time of death. The best two hopes that my kind can have in
this time of death are that they won’t be bought, or they are bought and hidden
in an Easter egg hunt and never found.
These two scenarios rarely happen, but they are the major two hopes that
we cling to.
The only other hope we can have is
that the person who buys our package will forget about us and let us go stale,
thereby sparing our lives (since humans don’t like us to be stale). True, life after this can be a bit
uncomfortable, being perpetually stiff and living a life among trash, but it’s
much better than being subjected to the cruel and unusual torture that humans
dish out. I shudder just thinking about
some of the things humans do to my poor, defenseless kind, especially knowing
that my story contains some of these tortures.
So, one particularly bright and
beautiful spring day not too long ago, my brother, my sister, my friends, and I
were having a fun time making faces at and scaring the human children. This trick didn’t work with adults because
they never looked closely enough at us to notice our expressions…or maybe they
did notice but would never admit that they’d seen it happen. Well, this spring day, for the first time
ever, a pair of adults did notice our faces, but this backfired on us: instead
of scaring them, we amused them.
“Ooo, look at that soft, sugary
goodness!” the young woman said, her blue eyes dancing with glee and
desire. As I looked into her enormous
eyes, I could see a purple sparkle reflected back at me. “They look so delicious. We should get some.”
The young man next to her grinned
in amusement and squeezed her hand.
“Let’s pick some out then.”
“Hmmm…I don’t know. There are so many choices…” the woman said,
biting her finger in serious contemplation.
The man laughed, amused by her
solemnity. “Choose wisely, Ella. It’s a very serious decision.”
“Oh, I know, Michael,” Ella said
playfully. “So I’m going to go with…that
package right there.”
My heart sank. Please
don’t pick us, please don’t pick us… But,
alas, they had picked us. All we could
do now was accept our fate and hope for the best, but with the looks of this
evil couple, we were sure to be doomed.
Fast-forward to Easter Sunday. The couple had recently returned from church,
had finished feasting on their Easter ham dinner, and were now preparing for
dessert. You’d think that on such a holy
day as Easter, and especially after just getting back from church, that these
people would show us mercy but no.
Dessert was to be served, on us.
Literally.
“That was a delicious meal, dear,”
said Michael.
“Thank you, honey. I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Ella said.
“Now it’s my turn…to provide the
dessert!” he said.
Sitting on the counter we shivered
in our box, terrified. We were not only
going to be eaten, we were going to endure one of the worst forms of torture:
the microwave. As Michael approached us
and ripped open our packaging, we said our prayers and goodbyes and held onto
each other until the very last moment, when we were torn from one another’s
side and popped on a plate.
“Are you ready?” Michael asked.
“Yep!” Ella chirped, bounding over
to the microwave. “Let’s explode ’em!”
As Michael placed us in the
microwave, and the horrendous finality of the door’s slam closed around us, I
wept for not only myself but also for the terrible cruelty of the human
race. But when the microwave turned on,
and we began to heat up and expand, even through the pain and suffering I felt
an odd peace. I knew this wasn’t goodbye
forever. I believed we’d see each other
in Heaven, and I was right. So, as we
bloated and melded into one mass of sticky marshmallow goo and were shoveled
into the hungry humans’ mouths, our bodies may have been consumed, but our
souls lived on.
My life on Earth as a Peep had
tragically ended, but my life in Peep heaven had just begun. I hope my story has inspired you, human, to
be a little more courteous of my “peep”-le, preferably steer clear from Peeps
at all costs. How about a chocolate
bunny instead?
