‘You can’t say a potato is vulgar, but it is’

By Murray Silby

Feb 8, 2024

**Dumbfounded:** Seven Creeks resident Jacqui Keys was ‘dumbfounded’ when she picked the latest crop of potatoes from her garden.

My dear old mum — between asking who drank from the milk bottle in the fridge and who didn’t flush the toilet properly — in her wisdom would say two people could sit on the same chair in a room and see the room completely differently.

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“Especially if they moved the chair,” I’d say before being told to stop cleaning the toilet with my brother’s toothbrush.

The point Mum was trying to make was that we all see the world differently and we all need to appreciate each other’s views.

That thought crossed my mind recently when Seven Creeks resident Jacqui Keys brought some unusual potatoes into The News office and asked what our staff saw when looking at them.

Jacqui, as she asked to be referred to, said she loved to grow spuds, pumpkins and other veggies in her garden, but her latest crop raised an eyebrow when she looked at them.

“I was dumbfounded,” she said.

“I’ve always had a proper potato. You can’t say a potato is vulgar, but it is.”

Jacqui, who is close to her 76th year, said she’d turned to the modern public square to have her fears confirmed.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes, and it has been put on the Seven Creeks’ Facebook, and they’re waiting for comments,” she said.

“All they’ve got is giggles.

“It’s only a potato, but it’s rude.”

Even at one of Jacqui’s social gatherings, the potatoes elicited smirks and wry looks.

“I showed a couple of people at the Shepparton Club, and they absolutely couldn’t say a word,” she said.

“Then one said, ‘That’s a man!’ He wasn’t rude. He just said, ‘That’s a man.’”

As for Jacqui, she sees something else, at least in one of the spuds.

“One looks like a munchkin,” she said.