When the message is misconstrued

For my own nefarious reasons...and you know by now I have no other kind...whereas for Socrates, "To do is to Be" and for Plato "To Be is to Do" and for Sinatra "DoBeDoBeDo", for me "To Reason is to be nefarious" and "To be Nefarious is to be happy"...so there I was, for my own nefarious reasons on an FTD website scoping out some of the various flower selections. Well, I made a couple of interesting discoveries.
First off, death is expensive.This, of course, is something Undertakers, Pall Bearers, Embalmers, Gravediggers, Funeral Directors, Casket Makers, and the Grim Reaper (who, it might be added, bears a remarkable resemblance to my conscience) already know. I often wonder why poor people die when they know they can't afford the funeral. Poor people live longer because it takes them that long to afford a nice maggot-rejector...err, casket.
Flower people know this too. Every year millions of flowers lose their lives, uprooted in a grim orgy of death and destruction that they might beautify the desk or mantle of some fair maiden and bring forth the fresh blossom of a joyful blush to her cheek...and also theoretically and hopefully dig the cad who sent them out of some difficulty into which he has gotten himself into, often through means beyond his comprehension, yet he knows enough to try and dig out the only ways he knows how. So off with their heads...flower heads, that is. The solution to every ill.
Well, so that was not so much a discovery as a reinforcing of something I already knew. Death is expensive, even when it is the death of some innocent flowers, their only crime being they are beautiful. If we killed people for being beautiful, that would be sad indeed. Fortunately, there would be several trimmings of the herd before I felt endangered, but still...it would be sad. That is not true for many of my friends.
The second thing I learned was the message you intend may not be the message that is received. Por ejemplo;
One bunch of flowers, aptly named something like "Love in bloom" had a description that included "...that will express your love or friendship...". Now, maybe it is just me. Maybe I am just cynical. Maybe I am wrong about this. And maybe it was really Caesar who whacked Brutus. But assuming a bunch of flowers that express love might be construed as friendship...well, if you send them to someone say...to celebrate a major accomplishment, to pick them up when they are feeling down, etc...well, vis-a-vis the dual nature, you better not pick this bunch (ha! a clever pun, right in the middle of an expository sentence that, in itself, also contains humor! what fun? I mean, what fun!) because he/she might think you love him/her when in fact you meant the friendship version.
Conversely, if you wish to express your love and affection but pluck these floral arrangements from the branch of internet plants, this also might cause consternation for the recipient. Imagine you express love, but she reads it...*gasp* friendship. Suddenly a flowering realtionship of love is crushed under the unbearable weight of those words..."let's just be friends". Suddenly the easy romantic gesture of flooding her with flowers is fraught with peril as the poor uneducated male drowns in a sea of questions...."What am I saying if I send this bunch of flowers?"
Roses are dangerous because if you send a color and don't know what it means...well, that is trouble. If you send red you might be "traditionally hidebound", "predictable", or "boring". If you send chrysantheums...well, here is a clue; never send something you cannot spell or pronounce. For all you know, the "hidden message of the flowers" is that you just joined a secret cult and starting next week will be undergoing a series of surgeries that will result in you becoming half-human and half-goat. Oh, flowers are dangerous indeed. And yes, they really do all have meanings...and no, most people really don't know what they are.
So let us assume instead our benighter hero chooses another bunch of flowers. "Aha!" he thinks. "I will let the designer select the flowers." And would you not know they have such a thing? Now, first off, you know what they are going to select is the trimmings from their good bunches...but that aside, it was the message under the phot that really caught my attention..."Our designer will build a bunch that shows how much you spent."
Okay...how, exactly, are they going to do that? Arrange the flowers in the shape of a dollar sign and number? Include a ballon that says "This bunch of flowers cost x amount of dollars"? I mean, seriously...how many of us can, without research, put a dollar figure on a flower sprue?
Yes, research is a valuable tool that allows you to learn a lot of things you may not have intended (or wanted) to learn. And no more is sending flowers an easy thing to do.