SAN DIEGO - Mike Sakasegawa was walking down a San Diego street this week and happened upon a lemon rolling along the sidewalk.
An uneventful sight by itself, but something that caught Sakasegawa's eye. He proceeded to record the lemon rolling — all two minutes of it. About a quarter of a mile later, he had unknowingly hit Twitter gold.
The video (found here) posted Wednesday morning has already been viewed more than 3 million times and gained more than 150,000 likes and counting.
Sakasegawa follows the lemon as it rolls for nearly two minutes on the street. At times it stalls as if it will come to a halt, but instead soldiers on. When it finally stops, the San Diego resident gives a quick wave goodbye to the lemon.
"I thought to take out my phone and film it just because I wanted to see how far it would go, and if it went a long way then I thought some people might find it funny," Sakasegawa wrote. "But I was not at all expecting this level of response."
Sakasegawa, who works as an electrical engineer and is also a writer and photographer, said the post wasn't anything out of the ordinary for him. His Twitter feed is filled with photos and videos of "mundane or everyday things" he finds entertaining.
"I post a lot of photographs or videos ... and none of them had ever gotten more than a few hundred views, so I assumed when I posted this one that it would be the same; that a few of my friends would like it and it would pass by like everything else," he wrote.
But something about this lemon resonated with users. A moment of zen? Perhaps a metaphor for the human condition? Just a funny video? It seems to be each for many.
"Honestly, I'm finding the response sort of bemusing, because it's just a silly, simple little video," Sakasegawa wrote. "But people seem to like it, and I saw a bunch of people say that it made them happy or that they found it soothing, and I'm glad about that."
