Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/QFjjDylcHO0

or read his diary below:

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Life, actually…

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DIARY OF A PLASTIC POTTED PLANT

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There it is, taking up eight percent of my view.

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I am sitting in a people-watching pew. Like other patients I fidget and find distractions to redact all the unknowable things I am about to experience, here in co-pay purgatory.

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This is just another roadside health haven and I am just one more person being quietly digested into the system.

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I notice two things.

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One, my idea of waiting is to gaze intensely at everything and everyone in the room, memorizing all for later contemplation, listening to moans and chuckles and sniffing the filtered air and feeling the texture of armrest and upholstery.

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Two, everyone else in the room is studiously staring palmward at their beloved ovoid devices, strumming past one image in search of the next image seeking yet another image…

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I notice the others not noticing me. This gives me full freedom to stare and examine at will. They will not know I was ever here.

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I vaguely recall days of yore when conversational exchange between contiguous people was everybody’s pastime. Dipping cautiously into the lives and stories of strangers gave me viewpoints I would never have imagined.

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It was fun and comforting.

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But I digress.

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My focus right now, in this distracted crowd, is on the plastic potted plant sutured into my view from the pew.

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The plastic potted plant is self-contained, its dependable fakery long-lasting. No watering required, no trimming, no fragrance emitted, no critters to inhabit or gnaw on it.

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All it receives is perhaps a bit of dusting every year or two. A live plant would shift or droop or bend toward the light. The plastic plant is frozen in time, somebody’s idea of elegant room design.

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It does seem to meld with the rest of the waiting room. Gray floor tiles and assembly-line art on the walls, insulation framed into the ceiling, cold white lights causing patients to look as ill as they might be.

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The plastic potted plant does not scream or laugh. Or does it? Is there a place such plants go at night to express their isolation?

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The plant is my only friend for a few minutes. It will be here when my next appointment rolls around, a new layer of dust on each stiff leaf begging for attention.

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I look forward to reuniting with this stolid creature. Seeing it again will at least remind me that I am still here, clutching my co-pay card and casting about for comfort and joy

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(c) 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed