This summer GD was really into watching VeggieTales. Every week we'd go to the library and check out a few videos and he'd watch them during his afternoon "rest time" every day. This went on for about 2.5 months, but then a couple weeks ago while we were standing in front of the VeggieTales DVDs at the library to pick out the week's selections, he declared that he was "taking a break from VeggieTales." I felt like an "it's not you, it's me" moment was coming between him and Larry the Cucumber, but he just went on to look for the next set of fictional characters to over-watch.
If you really wanted to, you could take a lot of time to ponder a universe with talking, singing vegetables. I actually don't really want to take a lot of time to ponder that, but I felt like I had no choice this summer. And one afternoon, a somewhat odd unanswered question about personified vegetables popped into my head and demanded answers.
I was putting GE down for his nap, listening to the faint sounds of singing asparaguses (asparagi?) drift through house. I was in haze of the early first trimester of pregancy and half asleep as GE nodded off. All the sudden I wondered if there had ever been a pregnant VeggieTale and what a pregnant VeggieTale would look like. I contemplated this for awhile in my progesterone-induced-but-I-can't-sleep-because-my-preschooler-is-awake-downstairs coma, only coming up with a mental picture of a pregnant butternut squash. The only problem was there aren't any female squash in the VeggieTales.
Later that day, I broached the question to my good friend via text. Fortunately, she's in the same stage of toddler-preschool-hood that I'm in a didn't think I was crazy but googled it for me. No hits. She did point out that Junior Asparagus' mom would have had to be pregnant at one point...wouldn't she? Well, I asked, or do VeggieTales grow from seeds like their non-singing counterparts? We didn't explore this idea further because we were 1) Realizing how few female VeggieTales there are, and 2) Trying to figure out exactly what vegetable Petunia is supposed to be.
(Sidenote: Regarding issue number 1, I googled both "are the VeggieTales misogynistic" and "female VeggieTales" to see what kind of public outcry there is about the lack of female vegetable representation (because even of the 5 female VeggieTales I can think of, one is a fruit) and I only found one blogger upset about it, particularly that the females have hair and the males don't so what kind of message is this sending our daughters??? But I did find several people condemning the VeggieTales as a whole because they encourage disrespect towards Bible characters. Eh...I'm going to let my kids keep watching VeggieTales. And regarding issue number 2: Petunia is a rhubarb. Now you can sleep better tonight know that.)
This line of thought all occurred about two months ago. Tonight as I started writing this a few other things occurred to me that I will leave you with to ponder:
1. The VeggieTales' personification probably does not carry through to their reproduction. After all, it is a well-known fact that they don't have belly buttons.
2. If they do start life as a seed, I'm guessing that they are GMOs. I'm surprised that some anti-GMO activist hasn't picked up on this idea and started spreading propanda about GMO vegetables coming to life and acting out Bible stories in our kitchen sinks. And, what's worse, they are so mutated they don't even have hands.
3. More than likely, though, in the VeggieTales universe, more singing, dancing, personified vegetables simply come into being through computer generation, not through conventional methods.
With that, I really think I should just go to bed.
