The potato woke up screaming, which was alarming because potatoes do not have lungs, throats, or permission.
The scream occurred anyway.
It echoed through the kitchen in a way that suggested time itself had stubbed its toe. A zucchini fell off the counter in shock. Somewhere inside a drawer, a radish fainted politely.
“I’M HAVING A SPECIAL DAY,” the potato shouted, even though nobody had asked.
This announcement did not improve matters.
The potato lay on its back near the sink, staring at the ceiling fan as it rotated with the arrogance of something that believed rotation was progress. His body felt heavier than yesterday, which was impossible because mass does not increase merely because one has decided to care about it. Still, the feeling persisted. He felt older in the way objects feel older when someone looks at them and says, Ah. You’re still here.
Today was his birthday.
Or his harvestiversary.
Or his chosen temporal punctuation mark.
The exact terminology had collapsed sometime around his twelfth reconsideration of existence.
He had decided this morning counted as a day that demanded cake-adjacent behaviour, and that was enough.
Across the kitchen, the vegetables were already arguing.
The carrot had climbed onto the counter and was drawing a timeline with a dry-erase marker he had stolen from a nearby office plant.
“Here,” the carrot said, tapping the counter aggressively. “This is linear time. It goes this way.”
He pointed dramatically.
A beet rolled his eyes so hard they nearly detached. “That’s propaganda.”
“IT’S GEOMETRY,” the carrot yelled.
“Geometry is also propaganda,” the beet replied. “Circles exist.”
“Circles are lies told by compasses,” the carrot said.
The potato groaned.
He rolled onto his side, which caused a cascade of forks to fall from a jar and spell nothing meaningful, though the tomato insisted it looked like regret.
“Everyone,” the potato said, “please stop arguing about time. I am currently experiencing it in my joints.”
“You don’t have joints,” said the celery.
“Exactly,” the potato replied. “That’s how bad it is.”
The onion emerged from behind the spice rack wearing a party hat made of onion skin and despair.
“IT IS THE DAY,” the onion announced, immediately bursting into tears. “THE DAY OF YOU.”
“I did not authorise hats,” the potato said.
“They appeared,” the onion sobbed. “Like obligations.”
A bell pepper was hanging upside down from the fruit basket, swinging gently and chanting.
“Another year closer to compost.
Another year closer to compost.”
“STOP THAT,” the potato yelled.
The bell pepper stopped, offended. “It’s a mantra.”
The potato pushed itself upright.
“I need everyone to understand something,” he said. “This is a birthday, not a funeral rehearsal.”
The mushroom appeared from inside a mug. Nobody knew how long he had been there.
“All birthdays are funerals rehearsed badly,” the mushroom said. “Cake is a denial you can eat.”
“WHY IS HE HERE?” the potato shouted.
“I transcend invitations,” the mushroom replied.
The potato rubbed his nonexistent temples.
He had wanted this day to be meaningful. He had wanted laughter, maybe a song, maybe a moment where the universe acknowledged him with a nod or a coupon. Instead, he had accidentally summoned a symposium.
“Fine,” the potato said. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing this properly. Someone explain to me what a birthday is.”
Silence fell.
Then chaos volunteered.
The carrot cleared his throat. “A birthday is a checkpoint. A metric. A chance to assess whether you have optimised your trajectory.”
“No,” said the tomato immediately. “A birthday is performance art. You pretend to enjoy attention while secretly auditing your failures.”
“It’s a ritualised interruption of dread,” said the onion, weeping harder.
“It’s branding,” said the avocado, who had just arrived and was extremely smooth about it.
The cabbage unfolded one layer and spoke for the first time.
“A birthday,” she said, “is an agreement with time not to notice you for one day.”
Everyone stared.
“That’s… unsettling,” the celery said.
“Yes,” the cabbage replied. “That’s why people like them.”
The potato absorbed this.
He thought about all the days that were not birthdays. Days that slid by unnoticed, uncelebrated, unlabeled, yet somehow heavier in retrospect. Days that later acquired importance retroactively, like dreams you only understand after waking.
“So,” the potato said slowly, “a birthday is not about age.”
“No,” said everyone.
“Is it about survival?”
“Barely,” said the beet.
“Is it about joy?”
“Optional,” said the tomato.
“Is it about cake?”
“Historically,” said the onion.
The potato sighed.
“I think,” he said, “that birthdays are lies we tell ourselves so time doesn’t feel like theft.”
The room went very quiet.
The zucchini dropped a fork.
“That was… illegal,” the zucchini whispered.
At that moment, the smoke alarm went off.
Nobody was cooking.
The smoke alarm simply sensed introspection and panicked.
As it screamed, the potato felt something snap inside him. Not break. Snap. Like a rubber band holding together a calendar.
“ENOUGH,” he shouted.
The alarm stopped.
Time hiccupped.
Somewhere, a clock reset itself to 12:00 and refused to explain.
The potato climbed onto the table, knocking over the cake-shaped concept, which collapsed into a philosophical mess.
“I AM HAVING A BIRTHDAY,” he declared, “AND I WILL DEFINE IT.”
The vegetables leaned in.
“Today,” the potato said, “I am not older. I am not wiser. I am not closer to anything except this moment, which is already leaving.”
The candle appeared.
Nobody lit it.
It was just there, burning, shaped like an infinity symbol that had given up halfway.
“This candle,” the potato said, pointing, “is not for wishes.”
The candle flickered smugly.
“It is for witnessing,” the potato continued. “We will not blow it out. We will watch it burn. We will age with it. We will be uncomfortable.”
The celery fainted.
The potato nodded. “Correct response.”
They gathered around the candle.
Minutes passed.
Then hours.
Then something happened to time. It stopped behaving.
The carrot aged visibly. Then de-aged. Then grew a second opinion.
The tomato ripened, unripened, ripened again, and began narrating his own decay in iambic pentameter.
The onion peeled itself entirely and then reassembled out of spite.
The bell pepper experienced three midlife crises and one artistic phase.
The potato felt himself turn thirty.
Then five.
Then ancient.
Then unborn.
He felt the absurdity of counting rotations around a star while pretending the rotations meant something intrinsic. He felt the comedy of assigning meaning to days when meaning leaked everywhere anyway.
He laughed.
It started small. A chuckle. Then a wheezing bark. Then a full-bodied, rolling laugh that shook starch loose from his soul.
“THIS,” he gasped, “THIS IS THE JOKE.”
“What is?” the vegetables asked.
“That we celebrate endurance instead of presence,” the potato said. “That we throw parties for survival instead of noticing that survival is already happening.”
The candle burned down.
Wax pooled.
Time resumed like nothing had happened, which was the rudest possible outcome.
Eventually, the flame went out.
Nobody clapped.
Nobody sang.
The potato slid off the table and landed on the floor, exhausted, fulfilled, mildly cracked.
“Well,” the carrot said, checking his timeline, “that was deeply unproductive.”
“Yes,” the potato said, smiling. “But now I know something.”
“What?” the onion asked.
The potato is considered.
“That special days aren’t special because they’re rare,” he said. “They’re special because we let ourselves look directly at being alive without flinching. And that’s hilarious.”
The mushroom bowed.
“So,” the tomato said, “are we doing this again next year?”
The potato shrugged.
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I’ll celebrate on a random Tuesday for no reason at all.”
The vegetables gasped.
“That’s illegal,” the zucchini said again.
The potato lay back, staring at the ceiling fan, which continued spinning without enlightenment.
Today would end.
Tomorrow would arrive.
Eventually, he would be eaten, forgotten, composted, transformed.
But today, he had stared time in the face and laughed first.
And that, he decided, was the funniest birthday gift imaginable
