Fireworks & that Little Guy
7.11.2008
If I was going to go back to school (perhaps attend some high brow liberal art school on the east coast), I would obtain a PhD in the very practical science of sociological sciences & my thesis would be on comfort. I would title my work, of course, with the pretension only found in theoretical journals. The Rapid Response Rate of Comforting Variables: Inquiry and Report. It would be a qualitative study as I find I cannot pour my heart and soul into quantitative quite the same. I would collect interviews from people around the world on what comforts them. By the end of my journey, my desk would be covered with items of comfort: teddy bears, blankets, a locket from a lost love, self help books, a picture of a mother, the bible, three tiered chocolate cake, a Russian novel, a Sinead O Conner single, a phone, a steering wheel extracted from a wreck resulting from reckless driving, a whiskey bottle, hand written letters, etc. And only one of these items would ever actually apply to me.
I am sitting with Ian at our kitchen counter on a gorgeous Friday afternoon. He is borrowing our chain saw in his first attempt at being a homeowner. The motorcycle is good as sold on Ebay so it waits patiently in our garage. We share a few occupational therapist stories before I begin pulling the randomest of food and drink onto the counter. I force him to join me in a sudden gorge of tastes. I make pink lemonade, pull out the apple sauce, gold fish crackers, strawberry ice cream, and he finally politely declines joining me when the bag of marshmallows hits the counter.
There are fireworks that have been sitting in the garage for a while and we light them off one at a time: the product of the sparks and big bang in the sky reveals a little man with a parachute who falls to earth. We cannot locate 3/3 of the parachute guys after their landing and are severely disgruntled by the loss. In a final attempt to succeed, we fire the last firecracker into a tree. Flames spark behind all the leaves like a scene from Back to the Future . The parachute man never comes down out of the tree so we stand under it, looking up, mystified by his fate.