Growing Popcorn

My kid came home from daycare with a DIY planter sprouting something green and tall. He told me it was popcorn.

“Has someone watered the corn?” hubby asked today. “Look at how much it’s grown already!”

“I watered it the other day,” I said, wondering to myself whether that was a lot of watering or a little – I knew nothing about growing corn. It didn’t sound like much, but the strong, green leaves looked happy enough.

“Corn can grow really tall,” I told my kid. Only the one who brought the plant was in front of me, my other kid was busy with legos. “What will we do if it reaches the ceiling?”

Being the popcorn enthusiast that he is, my kid lighted up at the idea. Eyes sparkling, he smiled, “Then we’ll need to drill a hole in the ceiling!”

“Maybe the corn will make a hole all on its own? It’s shaped like a drill, if you think of it.”

“Well, then we won’t need to drill it. But our upstairs neighbours might look into our home then, and say hello…!“

“Ah, but there are no upstairs neighbours, it’s a rooftop terrace, remember?”

“Oh, yes! That’s good, we could place a ladder there and climb up and down easily.”

“That would be fun! But what if someone was walking on the terrace and suddenly dropped in through the hole?”

Laughing, my kid had a thought, “In the summer, we could cover the hole and turn it into a trampoline! But in the winter it would be cold.”

“True. Winters would be hard with a hole in the ceiling.”

This was apparently hilarious and I was only too happy to accommodate the 5-year-old with my juvenile sense of humour.

“We’d be known to all as the popcorn family. We would have so much of it, we’d just eat it all day, every day. Corn would grow through our ceiling and we’d be busy popping it.”