Dear Adam and Eve

Dear Adam and Eve,

I've got a bone to pick with you. First, let me say that I don't blame you for all the wrong in the world. I mean, I'm a pretty curious little thing myself, and I don't always make the right choices. Who's to say that if I were in that garden I wouldn't have listened to the snake and chowed down on a shiny red apple? Certainly not me. In fact, I'm pretty sure I would've loved the possibility of knowing all things good and evil. Heck, if Anthony Bourdain had done a show espousing the deliciousness of apples, I probably would've eaten it without all the knowledge stuff thrown in as a bonus. I would have eaten it and felt sophisticated about it, too.

So I can't blame you for all the ills of the world because I may have done the same thing in your situation.

However, I think you did something more. Be honest with me. Something else must have happened. How else can you explain ragweed?

This is not your typical punishment for original sin. It's evil. And possessed. It's evil and possessed.

The evil beast multiplies at an unfathomable rate. It watches me pull up its little friends and cackles silently at my curses. When its prickly flesh pierces my skin through my industrial strength gardening gloves, it revels in my bloodloss.

I pull it up, determined to eradicate it from my life, yet it grows. For each awful weed I eliminate, three more spring up in its place. On many occasions, as I pull with all my might, it breaks off in my hands and leaves me sprawled on my back holding only the part that exists above the earth, leaving the heart of the plant to regenerate and come back heartier and more evil than before.

And so, Adam and Eve, I blame you. I blame you for whatever other sin you committed that caused God to plant this horrible menace. I am certain now that hell is but pasture after pasture of ragweed, and the unrepentant man is sentenced to forever pluck it. Hell is that awful place with no Round-Up, and the existence of ragweed on earth is our reminder of the eternal torment that awaits the unforgiven.

And it must be your fault.