A story . . .

. . . that may never, and possibly should never, be told.  It's not a story of a long lost love newly found.  Nor is it the hear-wrenching tale of a family's struggle to survive or to cope with the loss or illness of one of its members.  Not a love story or an account of injustice righted or never righted.  It's actually a story of a fungus.

The story is also one about integrity, honesty, enthusiasm, communication, timing and ignorance.  It began innocently with curiosity at the sighting of an unusual fungal growth which produced a much larger physical manifestation than one normally encounters on a lawn, wood or otherwise green area. And since there was sincere doubt as to the true identity of the specimen, a curious (have I used the word innocent yet?) the layman which encountered it chose to physically probe or otherwise accost the specimen in question out of sheer curiosity. In so doing, the uninitiated soul, without malice or intention of destruction, put an abrupt end to the life of the initially-mentioned fungal being without realizing the full range of implications, mainly as the result of past encounters with such earthly phenomena, albeit of much smaller stature and girth, which were clearly, or practically obviously, not beneficial to humankind as either nourishment or ornamentation.

Not long after the above described encounter, the party involved discovers through casual and friendly discourse, that someone possesses an enthusiastic and affectionate fascination with the very fungus by whom the former was confronted the very day prior.  Turns out the specimen is (most likely) beneficial to humankind as nourishment and may also, in the individual matter of one's own subjective opinion, be perceived as quite beautiful. In fact, the subject of the confrontation was brought up by the very one that accosted the fungus. After conversationally mentioning the encounter with the object and it's particularly impressive dimensions, the culprit learned that the appearance of this particular species had been eagerly anticipated by another party close to the situation and that he would be absolutely thrilled to learn of its whereabouts so that it could be further nurtured and possibly soon harvested.

Due to the phrasing of the initial casual observation and impression, as well as the ardent response that revelation prompted, the culprit was at a loss to relate the details of the complete encounter, i.e. the disengaging of the life form from it root/base.  And that inability haunted the culprit for an indeterminate amount of time with its accompanying feelings of guilt, dishonesty, disingenuousness and lack of integrity.

In hindsight, the best clear, concise, honest way the culprit could and should have related the original thought would have been to include the part about disengaging the thing from its trunk at the very beginning.  But, after all is said and done, a simple and heartfelt apology, although the dastardly deed was done innocently, would certainly not have hurt a thing.

What do YOU think?
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