The Parable of the Child in the Pumpkin Patch

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, what is in a name?”

Josh spoke thus:

A child stood in a pumpkin patch and looked at all the pumpkins waiting to gathered.  Each pumpkin sat blank and bland.

“You will be a ghost,” the child said to one pumpkin, and the pumpkin became a ghost.  The child could see the ghost’s sad eyes, the ghost’s screaming mouth.  The child could see through the pumpkin, and the child knew the pumpkin could float in mid air and pass through walls.

“You will be a vampire,” the child said to another pumpkin, and at once the pumpkin was a vampire.  The pumpkin’s fangs were sharp and prepared to pierce.  The child knew that someone’s blood would pass between this pumpkin’s lips.

“You are a cat,” the child said to a third pumpkin, and the pumpkin leapt into a tree.  The pumpkin, black as night, eyed the child.  The child avoided the pumpkin’s path.  The child knew the pumpkin was unlucky.

The fourth pumpkin the child chose was a goblin pumpkin.  This was a little pumpkin, but it was a clever pumpkin.  The goblin pumpkin winked at the child, its tongue stuck out in a challenge.  This pumpkin knew tricks the child feared.  This pumpkin demanded treats.

The child’s fifth pumpkin was a puzzle.

“Are you a devil?” the child asked the fifth pumpkin, but the fifth pumpkin would not tell the child its secret.  “Are you a demon?” the child asked the fifth pumpkin.  The fifth pumpkin was mute.

The child observed the fifth pumpkin from all sides.  It was a round pumpkin.  It was the roundest pumpkin the child had ever seen.  The child might have rolled the pumpkin in a skittles alley.  The child might have tossed the pumpkin in the sky and caught it in the way the child might catch the moon if the child could reach the trees behind which the moon descended.

“Are you the moon?” the child asked the fifth pumpkin, but the fifth pumpkin was not the moon.  The moon was descending behind the trees.

The child’s mother approached from the house.  The child’s mother had a knife.  The child’s mother approached the child and the fifth pumpkin.

“Yes, you will do,” the mother said to the fifth pumpkin, and the mother cut the fifth pumpkin from its vine.  The mother carried the pumpkin into the house, telling the child, “Fetch me cloves from the spice shed.”

“I know you now!” the child called to the pumpkin, “You are pie!”