What I learned from a duck

In 1992 a shipping container fell overboard on its way from China to the United States, releasing 29,000 rubber ducks into the Pacific Ocean. 10 months later the first of these rubber ducks washed ashore on the Alaskan coast. 

Since then these ducks have been found in Hawaii, South America, Australia, and traveling slowly inside the Arctic ice. But 2,000 of the ducks were caught up in the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex of currents moving between Japan, Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and the Aleutian islands. 

Items that get caught in the Gyre usually stay in the Gyre, doomed to travel the same path, forever circling in the same waters—but not always. Their paths can be altered by a change in the weather, a storm at sea, or a chance encounter with a pod of whales.

More than 20 years after the rubber ducks were lost at sea, they are still arriving on beaches around the world and the number of ducks in the Gyre has decreased. 

This means it is possible to break free. Even after years of circling the same waters it is possible to find a way to shore.” 

This isn’t a column about rubber ducks, but the history lesson did strike a chord with me. As I see it, the duck gyre paralleled one of the great mysteries of the human experience. 

Do we risk it and break free?

Imagine a fork in the road of life. A fork in the road, in my opinion, leaves me three choices. Go back to the old way from whence I came, or go left, or go right. 

One of these three choices can lead me to back to a comfort zone and two of them to try unknowns. Any choice can lead me to stumble and fall. 

Choice can lead me to leap and fly. 

Choice can produce the flat stare, make me use swear words; make me laugh, cry, smile or jump for joy. Choice can lead to wonderful experiences I’ve longed for, some lessons I’ve needed to learn and some I wish I’d never known. 

What I know for sure is that I don’t want to be one of the lifers who are destined to travel the path of least resistance, forever circling in the same waters and not thinking I have the power to choose. I don’t want to wait around for my course to be altered by a pod of whales or a windy day.

I want to be the one to break free.

The music band “Five for Fighting” challenges with their lyrics, “What kind of world do you want?” 

I’d like to think simpler times would be nice. Times that don’t crowd our days and nights with stress and worry and the incessant blathering of television news programs that perpetuate the frenzy and hype of the terrible misfortune of others.

Turn off the television and connect with human beings. Tell stories of when you were young. Put away your cell phone. Stop texting and really talk to and listen to the ones you love. Make the choice to connect the old fashioned way. 

Life is short. Make it count.
-- 

Out with the old house mouse

“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.”

A.A. Milne, of “Winnie the Pooh” fame, penned that quote long ago, but I’ll bet you a box of chocolate-covered cherries he stole it from his wife, Dorothy, when he overheard her whispering what he thought was an optimistic comment.

In all likelihood, she was glaring with gritted jaw at the heap of pants and socks he’d left on the floor on his side of the horsehair bed—and under the pile of clothes she discovered the moldy cookies in his pants pocket responsible for that “smell” she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Me? I found mouse poop in my trunk of Christmas decorations.

The last page of “O, The Oprah Magazine,” where Oprah Winfrey writes her column, “What I Know For Sure,” is the first thing I flip to every time I pick the magazine off the rack at the grocery store. Oprah’s sage advice hardly ever disappoints. 

The column I’d read was all about pleasure and gratitude, how to recognize it every day—however small and even when things really stink. 

So, of course, it got me to thinking. What pleasure is there in the discovery of mouse poop in the trunk of Christmas decorations?

Upon further investigation, I discovered a number of treasured keepsake ornaments made of glitter glue—all born of my daughters’ long ago primary years—shredded into chunks of disorderly nothing. Where, oh where, is the gratitude in that?

This “exciting discovery” made for a spilling of expletives from my mouth further lessening gratitude and drowning out the pleasure of “Superstar Christmas” music playing through my Bluetooth stereo. 

 
I dreaded digging further into the decorations to assess what else had been damaged. Everything Christmas was stored in that trunk 11 months out of the year.

Lo and behold, the pest had been creating mayhem for some time, with evident layers of assault on decorations to back up his crimes. Paper bells from Grade Three were toast. A old popcorn ball rolled in red glitter was now Swiss cheese and the little red bows once tied to a dozen tiny antique china bells were frayed and virtually unrecognizable. 

Tinsel shredded, egg carton ornaments pulverized, and my Christmas stocking holier than the nativity scene.

At any given time of the day at least two of the four cats that live here with me have been sleeping within feline earshot of the Christmas trunk—quite clearly unaware of the savory morsel lurking in their midst.

But as I flipped open the lid of an old “Noma” lights box stuffed in the bottom of the trunk the mouse hiding in the raffia I’d stored in there shot me the beady bulging eyes of panic, cleared the top of the trunk, hit the floor and blew past a cat who’d been poised on the rug. 

A short time later said cat returned licking it lips as if to say, “Yes, pleasure and gratitude really are found in the small things.”

Does this make me look short?

Most of the time I would be ever so grateful to be one or two inches taller.

For a short time when I was ten years old, I towered above everyone else in my class at Sixth Street School, and then my growth hormones decided they had better things to do.

In my preteens I stood on my tippy toes and stretched in front of my dresser mirror, hoping my shell would crack. I tried hanging from the door frame letting my legs dangle hoping gravity would make me taller and that I’d reach a new mark on the measuring stick graphic drawn by my dad in permanent marker on the wall of his carpentry shop.

When I was a youngster I believed my short stature was the result of being stunted by guilt after a stern warning by my Sixth Street School principal, the late great Ernie Buchan.

He’d figured out it was me who had made several alterations to the daily attendance sheet in my four-grade classroom when no one was looking and confronted me about it after school one afternoon.

For reasons I still don’t understand, I was convinced that I wouldn’t get caught (while waiting for the bus in my classroom) rubbing out the “P-for-Present” beside every other student’s name but my own, and penciling them all in as “A-for-Absent.” 

Though Mr. Buchan’s reprimand amounted to nothing more than a reminder about right and wrong, it cancelled out any and all seedling plans to be a mischievous kid ever again.

My short stuff harangued me in Grade Nine gym class. I couldn’t volley the ball over the net, I couldn’t spike, dribble, or slam dunk my way through any sport on the gym floor. I despised gym class for that reason. I also wasn’t allowed to shave my legs or underarms when I was 13 and I really, really needed to do that.

By the time I reached the end of high school, my goal in life was to be an airline stewardess. I had taken deep thought stabs at psychology and biology careers but given that I always got a “D” in math class and dropped out of math as soon as the powers that be allowed it in high school, those job options appeared a tad far fetched.

I opted for a two-year course in Travel and Tourism Administration at Confederation College in Thunder Bay. I could be a travel agent and a stewardess. I was glassy-eyed about catching the red eye to France.

I went post-secondary with bells on, until our lead professor in the Travel and Tourism program asked each of us to tell the class what we wanted to do when we graduated in two years.

He pulled me aside after class, and though kind on his words, said I was too “short” for airline duty. Talk about having your hopes crash-landed.    

        

I also was blessed with the curvier end of the Greek figure and the “XL” tattoo on my behind. In all of my life I don’t think I’ve ever slipped on a pair of pants in a department store that aren’t two-sizes too big in the waist to compensate for my the junk in the trunk, with three to four inches of extra length in the leg to remind me that I did not make the “average-to-regular” percentile list on the sewing room floor.

And though on numerous occasions I have declared a personal boycott of pantyhose that claim to be “thigh and tummy slimmers,” I continue to buy them, as I do the large Hershey milk chocolate bars partially responsible for why I wear the demon nylons.

I continue to pull a groin muscle and strangle everything below my belly button inserting myself into the undergarment, pushing that last little bit of curvy fat down into the waistband while turning blue.

And though I always manage to pour all of me into the evil contraption, I’m left with rolls of extra nylon pooled in wrinkles at my ankles like an elephant’s back leg, because I’m too short--my height and weight don’t match the chart on the back of the product card—ever. 

Here comes that Christmas party dress again short stuff. Hold your breath.