George and the Romance of the Onion
A Short Story
Disclaimer
The author is not responsible, in any way, for injuries to the reader, including and not limited to, convulsions of laughter, screams of pain, agonies of idiocy, agonies of intelligence, agonies of other things, and death. You should have done more abdominal exercises.
The Story
Onions are delicious.
Unfortunately, as our protagonist discovered, they tend to be rather… poignant. The scent emitted from one’s mouth after devouring one of these delicious vegetables is the stuff of poetry. Poetry such as The Jabberwocky, poorly written limericks, and The Wasteland, attractive to a certain kind of person but repulsive to those who have not become accustomed to its wonders.
Young Mr. Hutchins, by the name of George, was one such. He considered himself a connoisseur of onions, even traveling as far as the Arctic to chase down the fabled Polonion1. He succeeded, too, but unfortunately the evidence was lost, its only trace floating in a cloud from George’s mouth. If someone had discovered an onion on the moon, George would have been the first on board the spaceship to reach it and devour it.
However, there is a downside to this science (or hobby, perhaps) of the eatery of onions.
Once George had achieved the elevated status of Sophomore in college at the tender age of nineteen, he began to turn his gaze upon the acquirement of a wife. We commend him for this initiative.
Fortunately for George, there were several eligible and furthermore unattached faithful young Christian ladies, as single as the onion growing in George’s garden,2 attending his college and the community surrounding it. There were even a few within his own class with whom he had occasionally exchanged words, a good first step to courtship procedures, as unfortunately neither young women nor young men have the ability to telepathically communicate their attraction to the other.
George sincerely wished this was the case, as he was well aware that it was the young man’s duty to pursue a wife, and not the other way around, but it would be much less embarrassing for him if he knew which young ladies found him a “husband prospect” and which did not care for him to start with.
Once he had inhaled sufficient onions to strengthen his spirit, George dared to approach a young lady he found quite attractive, a young miss Emma of the sophomore persuasion. She was short (or petite, as her female friends would term her) and ginger, with the character quite often and rightly attributed to redheads. Before he dared approach her, he asked the permission of her father, who acquiesced.
It was the fellowship hour after the morning service when he approached her. Emma could see that he was quite nervous, and she resolved to be kind to him, whatever his conversation might be to her.
It was quite windy outside, and so when George drew near to Emma, he was quite close in order to be heard.
“Emma,” he said nervously.
“Yes?” she queried.
“I was wondering if you would, possibly, maybe, be interested in being courted by me.”
Now, this was not quite grammatically correct or exactly confident, but Emma got the gist of it along with a quite potent gust of onion breath. Suddenly, and for no apparent reason (on George’s part), any attraction for him she might have held was quite rudely defenestrated, much as a rotten onion might be tossed into the garbage bin.
Attempting to be polite, but not quite succeeding, Emma coughed and said, “No, absolutely not. No way, ever,” then stumbled away from him, retching more violently than she had known was humanly possible.
Quite befuddled, George watched her leave. He knew he was neither as tall nor as handsome as some of the other lads, but he was quite aware that he was a decently nice-looking lad, with swoopy blonde hair, a jawline that Timothee Chalamet would be envious of (if he knew George existed), and eyes that had been described by a certain young sentimental freshman as “the sea in a storm,” and “the water of his soul.” That particular description (and the young woman) he was unaware of, actually.
The next Sunday, undaunted, George approached another young lady. Her name was Sylvia, and she, too, was quite lovely. Her hair was cool blonde (the color of the inside of an onion, thought George adoringly) and she was tall, almost to the point of making George feel short, though that daunted him not. She was intelligent, defying the blonde stereotype, and had faced down George (and even beaten him) in several arguments.
He was a bit bolder this time, having analyzed his previous approach several times mentally and concluded that it was his confidence that was lacking.
“Sylvia,” he stated, straightening his dapper jacket as he approached her, “I would be most honored if you would give me the pleasure of courting you.”
Sylvia looked at the ardent young man, and smiled. Encouraged, George opened his mouth in a gigantic grin, and breathed out simultaneously. His breath wafted across to Sylvia.
She choked. A bit more tactful than the ginger, she said, “George, I would say yes, but I’m currently not ready for marriage.”
Downcast, he turned away, but not before he heard her begin to violently retch upon the pavement, ruining what had been her favorite dress.
George ambled slowly home from church that afternoon, wondering what on earth could be the matter with him. Two girls, one after the other, had turned him down. They had not only turned him down, they had somehow found him completely repulsive, enough to barf in the public eye.
These thoughts simmered in his mind for several days, much as an onion would simmer on the stovetop. Indeed, his mind was like unto an onion: many-layered, peeling back each to reveal a deeper one.
Meanwhile, the news had drifted around the community that George Hutchins had not only asked two young ladies to court within two weeks, but that they had both turned him down, in a manner which might almost be termed violent. Old women shook their heads; the old men laughed; the young friends of George put their heads together, and the young women huddled in frightened circles, wondering which one would next be put victim to George’s oniony breath.
One morning some days from then, George visited the local coffee shop, and sat down to study, little noticing that the chairs around him immediately cleared, except for one girl who had a cold and didn’t notice the odor. He only noticed the sweet silence as he opened his books, appreciating it.
It had been about half an hour, when, unnoticed by George, a couple young men and women entered the coffee shop. The young men nudged one of the young women towards George, and, timidly, she approached him.
However, George had eaten a generous breakfast of onions that morning. His personal aura had grown, significantly, in intensity. When the young woman was about five paces away from him, she fell down as if dead upon the floor.
Startled by a loud thump, George glanced up and was startled to see a young woman lying in the appearance of death. He dropped his very expensive books and ran to her. Her friend, hitherto unmoving (having come along for moral support), cried out and ran, pushing him away.
“Stop! You’ll make her worse!”
George, of course, was quite confused, especially when the second young lady fainted right in front of his eyes.
His friends, not as brave or as chivalric as he (though they had much better breath, and perhaps that made up for it), fled. George had barely noticed them and thought nothing of it. He began to apply CPR (thankfully, he didn’t try mouth-to-mouth) to the first young woman, who suddenly came to life.
“Get away from me!” she screamed, wrenching herself away. She staggered for the door, heaved it open, and gasped in the much-welcome fresh air. As the breeze streamed in, her friend came to life as well. They both fled. George crossed his arms, staring after them.
“I was only trying to help,” he said to himself, as he returned to his books and finished his studying.
But a flood of rejections from young women, when you are not half-bad-looking yourself and cannot understand why, would put a damper on anyone’s spirit, and George was no different. He decided he was too fat, why I’m not sure, as he was about as fat as Jack Black is skinny, and went on a diet of bread and water and red meat. He joined the track team and became quite proficient at pretty much everything.
Some of his friends, a few months later, started asking questions like “George, why no wife yet?” “George, you need to get a girl!” “Lookin’ mighty lonely over there, Georgie boy,” and things like that.3
When his twentieth birthday dawned, George decided that, once again, it was time for him to pursue matrimony. He’d avoided girls the past few months, but he knew there had to be one girl who would love him, and not fall down in a faint or barf when he came near.
Hoping to meet some of the girls outside of his circle (all who now seemed to find him repulsive) he got a role in a play and met several new girls.
One stood out to him. She was a happy, bouncy brunette freshman by the name of Esther, with cheeks like round red apples, a huge smile, and eyes that were like the night sky in autumn, or so he put it when he started writing poetry about her.
George put down his pen. What on earth was he doing? He glanced at his paper. He had written a sonnet, a very bad one too, about a girl. He’d never done something like that before. Was he ill? George immediately went to see his friend, a doctor-in-training.
He explained all of his strange symptoms: the way girls seemed to become ill near him, the way that had changed recently, his change in diet and exercise, and the strange poetry that had flowed from his fingertips, through the pen, and into the page in the form of a very cringe-worthy and terrible sonnet.
His doctor friend, to George’s utter amazement, burst out in laughter.
“What?” asked George. “It’s very serious. I can’t figure it out!”
His friend leaned closer and sniffed. He leaned back again and laughed loudly. “George, I can’t believe it!”
“What?” George asked again. His friend simply smiled.
“George, I would ask that girl you were writing poetry about if you could court her. And I would keep your current diet. Otherwise, I think there’s nothing wrong with you.”
George departed a happy, if very confused, man.
That next evening, when they were departing from their play practice, George pulled the young lady aside.
“Esther?” he asked. No trace of timidity marred his tone. She thought, looking up at him, that he had never seemed more masculine.
She simply smiled, and to George, it was the most beautiful thing in the world, more beautiful than an onion sauteed in butter and slightly salted. He wanted to ask her to marry him right then, but he was wise for his years (if slightly clueless) and knew that that would put the cart ahead of the horse in this matter, or something related to onions but I’m not sure what.
He smiled back, and this time, there was no coughing from the feminine element. “Would you do me the honor of allowing me to court you?”
She did not say him nay. The courtship proceeded with alacrity (like an onion cooking when you turn up the pan too high) and alarmingly bad poetry, and that summer, the two were married, just when the onions were ready to eat, though they partook not of them.
When they were old, they would read each other their love letters and their horrific poetry from their youth and laugh at their sentimentality. Her eyes were “stars in an autumn sky,” and his were “the sea in a storm, the water of his soul.”
By the way, some few years into their marriage, they rediscovered his love for onions, but by that time he had learned to put everything in its proper place and a place for everything, which is a phrase that means onions go in his stomach but not as often as he would like, and onion breath never plagued him again, which probably added a few years on Esther’s life, but we shall say no more, and pull the curtain on a happy and fruitful (or onionful?) ending.
The End
Did you enjoy this? You can find the previous installment in this “series” of short stories here, at The Elephant Under The Bridge!
Which turns out to have no relevance to the story. Oops.
He had eaten the rest.
I cannot confirm that men actually say stuff like that; I’m a girl.
This was wonderful!! I love your writing style, and the light, humorous narration matched the story so well. I'm glad George got his happily ever after.
(Also - the mention of defenestration made me very excited.)
Well done, Glori!
Haha. Poor old George. I like onions sometimes but yes, you better pop a mint in afterward. The breath can be brutal. I'm glad George finally got that figured out. Awesome story, Glori.