This Flower Pot Has Got to Go

It's strange how much drama a seemingly harmless philodendron can cause.

The one I'm talking about takes up a small shelf in a corner near my sink, but it wasn't always mine. It lived at Email Dumper's place, but wasn't thriving there. He didn't give it the light or water it needed, then tried to throw the poor plant away. But it wasn't even close to dead! Just a bit wrinkled. If the plant could have talked, it would have been all "I'm not dead yet! I'm feeling better!" But alas, it was heading for the dead wagon when I stepped in to save it.

I think everyone has a weakness for something. For a woman I work with, it's stay cats. My sister is a sucker for sad dogs. I've never been that way with critters, but god help me if I walk near the clearance plant rack at Home Depot. I'd buy them all if I could, and give them the good soil and sunlight they deserve. The poor plants don't ask to be neglected and then rejected because their leaves wilt a bit. Every plant deserves a home.

So it's no surprise that I took this philodendron in. I happen to love philodendrons, and already had a few others in my house. I packed this one carefully in a box so he wouldn't shift around on my drive home, and placed him on the shelf where he still lives today.

Unfortunately for me, he was in a cute little blue pot. I didn't think a thing about it until at least a year later, when Email Dumper asked me to return the pot.

You've gotta be freaking kidding me, right? We weren't even broken up or anything. We were still together but he wanted the pot back? Really? It matched the other nine he had, he said, and he wanted his complete set. "What happens if I want to grow 10 plants together? IKEA doesn't even sell these pots anymore. And 10 fit perfectly on top of my bookcases," he whined at me.

Thus followed one of our most heated conversations that didn't end with me throwing something. First of all, he'd never keep 10 plants alive if one gave him so many problems. But I mostly argued that you don't give someone something and then ask for part of it back. That's just wrong. It's bad manners. It's something we learn when we're six. If he'd expected me to return the pot, that should have been clarified when the transaction took place. As far I was concerned, the pot came with the plant and both were permanently in my care. "You cannot have it back. Stop asking me. It's rude and you're being a child."

I kept the pot.

But now it bugs me.

I love the plant. He does well on his perch in the kitchen, but sometimes I don't water him out of spite because the pot brings back bad memories. Then, of course, I feel bad and clean off the dead leaves and give him a good drink and everything is fine. I realized a few months after the breakup that I should have repotted the plant in something else and included that damn blue pot in the bag of belongings I returned to him. But at that point, it was too late. I didn't want anything to do with him. And it's a perfectly good pot. The plant does well in it.

Now I can't stand to look at it, though. It's the last remaining shred of Email Dumper in my house and I want it gone. I see three viable options.
  1. Send the pot back to Email Dumper in the mail. No note, no return address.
  2. Throw it away.
  3. Bust it to hell with a hammer (wearing safety goggles, of course) and ask my friend who is into mosaics to turn it into art for me.
I'm leaning toward the third option. Because hammering the shit out of it sounds like the kind of cathartic fun I'm looking for in my life these days.

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