I never thought I'd be the type to fall for imitation flowers, but here I am, captivated by a ceramic monstrosity that looks like it was plucked from the set of "The Little Mermaid." My boyfriend, in a rare moment of decorative inspiration, brought home this enormous mondo flower - a term I'm convinced he made up on the spot - and declared it wall art for the living room. At first glance, it resembled nothing so much as calcified sea coral, the kind you'd find washed up on a beach after a particularly vigorous hurricane. But as he hung it on our wall with all the ceremony of unveiling the Mona Lisa, I found myself oddly transfixed. This ceramic wall flower, this abstract art masquerading as flora, began to grow on me like an exceptionally persistent mold. Its undulating petals (if you could call them that) caught the light in ways that made our living room feel like an underwater grotto, minus the damp and the fish smell. Visitors would invariably ask about it, their eyes wide with a mix of awe and confusion. "It's a mondo flower," I'd say with newfound authority, as if I'd been an expert on fictitious blooms all my life. Now, when I catch myself staring at it during commercial breaks, I realize I've become one of those people who appreciate "art." My boyfriend, naturally, is insufferably smug about the whole thing.