I had an older brother once who was half vegetarian on his mother's side and something else, Norwegian I think, on the other. He only ate meat on Mondays, Wednesdays, Saturdays, and certain religious holidays. When he was twenty one years old, he hired on in the merchant marine as a flotsam tender and rapidly worked his way up the mast and had to be ordered down by the captain. That's just the kind of guy he was.
During an otherwise unremarkable voyage in late October of his seventh year, after inadvertently crossing the international dateline twice, he found himself in Tuesday again, unbeknownst to him, and choked on a potato and drowned. His body was never recovered, just the half eaten potato. Dental records had to be used to positively identify the potato as his.
At the funeral, my mother presented me that potato in a ceremonial gesture of blame, and adhering to tradition I planted it in the flower garden in front of my house just like my father and grandfather had done before me.
I know this sounds pretty bizarre and hard to believe and I've heard no rational explanation that fits what I've seen with my own eyes, but often times in the fall, when the wind is calm, the night dark, and the sky quiet, you can still go out to the garden barefoot with a shovel or sharp stick and dig around and find little potatoes just like the one that killed my brother. That's why I don't let kids play in my garden.
