Winged Heelys

In thinking this over, I remembered reading the fable of the Crow and the Pitcher as a kid. If you've never read it, a crow finds a pitcher full of water, but can't reach the bottom, so, after failing to knock it over, he piles pebbles into it until he can drink from the pitcher.

I've heard various morals for this, from "thoughtfulness works better than brute strength," to "necessity is the mother of invention," and "little acts add up." But like... I started thinking about being a pebble, rather than being the crow.

I don't have to be the whole solution. I don't even necessarily have to be the one person who finds the solution. I just have to be willing to help as much as I can and raise the water level, and help the solution happen.

I'm sure some people will say that sounds weak and defeatist or whatever, which, you know, first of all, fuck you. But this is - in all seriousness - one of the ways in which lasting change is made. Not by big singular dramatic gestures, not by one person burning themself out by somehow doing everything all of the time, but by the dogged and continual persistence of people being present and doing what they can do, over and over, raising the water line.

It's okay to be a pebble. It's okay to raise the water level a little, in concert with all the other pebbles, and get your comrade a little drink of water. Do what you can, when you can, the best that you can, and find your peace with that.

It's okay to not do everything.

Questions I have to ask Hermes:

Does Kharon offer a student discount?

Is he affiliated with AARP?

Does he have a mailing list we can subscribe to to receive coupons??

Can I use my FSA/HSA card?

"Would you like to?"

"Sure!"

So I told them. I told them the story as I know it- and I've had a bit of practice. Orpheus, child of a wishing star, favorite of the messenger god, who had a hard-working, wonderful wife, Eurydice; his harp that could lull beasts to passivity, coax song from nymphs, and move mountains before him; and the men who, while he dreamed and composed, came to steal Eurydice away. I told of how she ran, and the water splashed up on my clothes. But I didn't care. I told of how the adder in the field bit her heel, and she died. I told of the Underworld- how Orpheus charmed the riverman, pacified Cerberus with a lullaby, and melted the hearts of the wise judges. I laughed as I remarked how lucky he was that it was winter- for Persephone was moved by his song where Hades was not. She convinced Hades to let Orpheus prove he was worthy of taking Eurydice. I tugged my coat back on, and said how Orpheus had to play and sing all the way out of the Underworld, without ever looking back to see if his beloved wife followed. And I told how, when he stopped for breath, he thought he heard her stumble and fall, and turned to help her up- but it was too late. I told the story four times after that, to four different groups, each larger than the last. And I must have cast a glance at the statue, something that said "I'm sorry, I miss you--" because when I finished my second to last retelling, a young boy piped up, perhaps seven or eight, and asked me a question that has made my day, and potentially my life: "Are you Orpheus?" I told the tale of the grieving bard so well, so convincingly, that in the eyes of a child I was telling not a story, but a memory. And while I laughed in the moment, with everyone else, I wept with gratitude and joy when I came home. This is more than I deserve, and I think I may never be sad again.

Me, I like the skill-based contests. Drag racing. Circle track racing. Bicycle racing. Shopping cart racing. Really, any kind of racing. I don't win those, either, due to a crippling disability that doctors call "being real fucking bad at it." However, at least I felt like I was involved, and feeling like I was involved is what life is all about.

With a magazine contest, you fill out a form, send it in, and then they don't tell you anything. Who won? Not you, or they'd have phoned. Probably nobody you know. Maybe nobody at all, and they gave the free vacation to Disneyland to an associate editor. Would it help to enter a contest on the internet, instead of sending in an entry form from the April '86 issue of a car magazine that went out of print two decades ago? It does not make a significant mathematical difference.

Not far from where I live is a small provincial park. In case you're from a country that doesn't have provinces, just think of it as a park. No adjectives, and nobody gets confused. In this park is a lot of protected wildlife. We have the occasional problem with raccoons in our garbage bins, feral coyotes coming up to nip our kids, field mice eating holes in our wiring.

Bears are not that big of a problem usually, but we had a really cold summer and those dudes are hungry. So they wander a little further than normal. Right into my neighbourhood. Someone got really upset, possibly because a bear tried to eat their kid, and called the cops on them. I don't think this would have happened if it were a polar bear, but I'm not going to go around shaking that particular tree.

The province responded by putting up a bear trap. In case you're unfamiliar (I was,) a bear trap consists of a box that the bear goes into and then is trapped. On the side of it, just to make sure that no dumbasses get trapped in there, is the wording "DANGER BEAR TRAP" in two-foot-high red lettering (bears are considered largely illiterate.) And on the inside is a fine new steak, at a time when steak has become incredibly expensive. I'm not going to lie to you: it has been a pretty hard year, and a bit of porterhouse would go a long way to making it better for me.

I headed on down there, ready to retrieve the steak that my tax money had paid for, and found something else entirely. My neighbour, Carl. He had decided to ignore the urgent warnings of the bear trap elite and make his own decisions in life. For his effort, he was able to get a free steak. A free steak, and also to be surrounded by a group of starving, angry bears, which I scared off as I approached using my mobility scooter (a 1988 F-150 with fog lights that look suspiciously like the runway lights that went missing from the airport last month.)

Carl was lucky that the trap managed to keep bears out as well as keep him in, until I figured out the prominent "release bear" lever on the side. Even so, if I had shown up a few minutes later, he'd probably have been ursine chow – bears these days are smart.