My current state of mind is much like that of a man being nibbled to death by ducks. If you know anything at all about ducks and their nibblings, then you must know that kind of death would be the result of a million tiny lacerations inflicted on your person by their serrated, rubbery, blunt bills and all to the staccato beat of their filter feeding numa numa numm numm numms.
Or perhaps my mental state is best likened to that of some hapless behemoth being assailed by an army of Lilliputians all flinging their grappling hooks and lines over and across my every limb, slowly dragging me down and trussing me up like a pig for the spit.
Either way, my enemy these days has not taken on the guise of a Goliath. It is not the roar of a giant’s battle cry that drowns out my senses or the crushing blow of 600 shekel’s on my shield that makes my knees buckle. Instead, it is the incessant numa numa numm numm numms of life’s rubbery, blunt bills that muddles my mind and an accumulated web of monofilament aggravations entangling my ankles that makes me fall.
It is the little stuff. It is the persistent water torture of the little stuff that has nearly felled me of late.
Giants would almost be preferred. They are big and in your face and heavy and pack a punch. They are worthy opponents. I have faced some of life’s giants, and while it really stinks to try one on for size, at least I could gird myself for battle and wade into the enemy on faith.
But how does one face down a duck? And lashing out at Lilliputians seems so pitiful and unmanly. However, I confess that I am ill equipped for enemies such as these.
Lately my ducks are Legion, a colossal flock disguised as life’s ordinary objects and events, hell bent on nipping me one molecule at a time into submission:
These ducks are any set of my keys: My keys always find themselves in the pocket of the hand most filled with stuff that cannot readily be put down. If I walk to my truck with my left hand laden with a coffee cup on one finger, a water bottle on another, my backpack on that same shoulder, and my newspaper clamped firmly under that same arm, ---because I am certain that my keys are in my right pocket ---then it is a given that my keys will be in the left pocket. Or worse in my case, like so many Mohicans they just disappear altogether requiring a locksmith shaman to conjure their ghosts from the dead.
These ducks are my neck ties: When I was fat, picking out a tie was not an issue. Almost all my shirts were white with a blue one in the mix for special occasions. I lost weight and lost the peace of white shirts. Now most of my shirts are blue with some sort of pattern ----I stayed away from any kind of horizontal pattern or lines during the fat days. Now the skinny me will stare dumbly at the tie rack for unnumbered moments as the ducks nibble away at my sanity and make me late for faculty meeting. Getting dressed used to be easy, now it is an unexpected stressor.
These ducks are my cell phone: That winking, chirping, howling device that I once lived quite peacefully without, now must be with me always. Its siren song is irresistible, and I must hearken to its wailing, especially if it is buried deeply within my pants pocket, and I am snuggly buckled behind the wheel of my old trusty pickup speeding down some deer infested, winding, back road clutching a Diet Pepsi in one hand and driving with my thigh. It has taught my wife impatience. Now when I am running late, she can call to see if I actually am dead in a road ditch instead of having to wait for the police to confirm it. I have died many thousand times since I got my phone, only to be brought back to life by answering it, and thereby making hundreds of thousands of insurance dollars vanish into the vaporous mists.
These ducks are the papers I have yet to grade: Those monuments of wood pulp I have erected on my desk rival even the stone ruins of Ozymandias and testify daily to my greatness----at waiting. Those parchment ziggurats bound for future recycling bins are my offering to the Power School God and will soon reach unto the digital heavens-----someday. Yet their weight bears down on my Atlas like shoulders crushing me to my academic knees. I cannot bring myself to throw them down because I have rolled that paper boulder to the mountain top too many times only to see it roll down again. Futility leaves me inert in the end.
These ducks are the empty coffee pots: Those false friends who promise lifted spirits by offering their hand---le to my shaking, caffeine, craving fingers only to mock them with their lack of heft. Or worse they tantalize me with a thimble of the dregs and force loud curses and accusations from my lips.
These ducks that nibble are the flat tires, the lost keys, the dead battery, the chicken crap on the deck…and my shoe, the leaky pipe, the honey-do list as long as my leg, the Cub Scout meeting, the dinner with friends, one more weekend planned by someone else, dog pee on the floor, ferrets loose in the house…somewhere, football in the morning, football in the evening, football in the afternoon, the goofy class schedule I forgot about, one more meeting, the coming adrenaline deficit disorder at football season’s end, the beginning of another season soon after that, and hundreds of students pulling at my shirt tails like orphan children begging for bread. And ignorance… lots and lots of ignorance.
Each one a flock of ducks with serrated bills nipping its molecule of flesh, each one a Lilliputian Army dragging me down.
Of course, I left out the transition from high school to college for one child and the heart rending frustration of another for whom math might as well be encrypted launch codes for missiles on a nuclear sub. And it is Fall --- which always makes me restless, and it is thirteen years since Jacob died. And I haven’t even mentioned taking attendance.
I should be a fan of these ducks though. I think we are eventually meant to be consumed by ducks…. At least I think the ducks are meant to consume the chaff of this life…their nibbling is meant to make us ready to go. These ducks are about the business of pulling up the welcome mat of this world and rolling out the carpet for the next. They make us long for a better country. They highlight the joy of coming REST.
I could use a good rest. I could stand to live in a place where someone “…will wipe every tear from (my) eyes” and “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
But not yet.
Now is the “…pressing on…” time. So let us press on.
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