Playing Squash (Part 3)

The growers turn to the community for help. At first they go to their friends, giving them shopping bags full of zucchini so their families can learn to loathe it too. Early in the season, they still have time to turn the raw zucchini into more useful nauseating items such as jelly. But soon, harvesting a fresh crop of zucchini every eight hours, they are too busy for such niceties.

Gardeners soon find their circle of friends narrowing to include only other zucchini growers, and they hold ritual zucchini exchanges wherein they swap grocery bags full of them. Soon they realize that they are not reducing the overall quantity of zucchini in their houses. They are forced to take drastic measures.

Zucchini begins to be found abandoned on doorsteps, in the back seats of any cars foolishly left unlocked in zucchini season, and occasionally even on park benches. Gardeners generally want their produce to be given a good home, but sometimes desperation gets the better of them. At this time of the year, members of the clergy are deluged with gifts of produce from their parishioners, and there is no gracious way to stop them. Many clergymen are forced to take up gardening so they can say truthfully that they have more than enough zucchini of their own. But then they have to find a way to get rid of it so it won't go to waste. Lock your doors.