*Thud* *Rattle*
The graceful entrance isn’t my forte. At least I didn’t walk into the door frame this time. Sitting down at the folding table, and jostling my neighbors, the table top, scooting the chair across vinyl tile, and making a general crash landing, I remarked “Someone should write an essay on misplaced table legs.”
Since that statement was directed towards my fellow Hill City Writers…here’s a delivery, a “just for fun”, inspired by the grace of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and that quality deficient in my knee. Unlike the trains serving as a metaphor for death in last week’s short story and Jesus making a clever cameo as a savvy commuter, this one has no point.
Who Put That There?
Felix was surprised again.
Felix was often surprised, which had both taken the novelty out of that particular state of mind, and, over time, given his eyebrows an arched appearance, much to the envy of his female friends. Perhaps there’s something to the matronly warning of faces getting stuck in expressions.
Somebody had designed a table with a leg.
Felix’s knee had made this discovery as he sat down.
The average person would call the result a crash, but to the finely tuned ear of a jazz aficionado, the sound the plastic and metal folding table made could trace early influences to the sleigh bells of New England, with a stop in Hoboken’s factories, tempered with a distinct nylon of the West Coast.
Felix’s knee, like most of us, didn’t care. It hurt. If it had it’s colleague’s capacity for thought and introspection, it might have been discouraged at the event. “How often must I crash into things? This has got to be the 437th folding table I’ve lost an argument to. Will I ever learn?” If his knee had been of a disagreeable sort, it might have resented not only the table and designer, but physics itself. “Why must gravity pull equally on both sides, making the case for two legs? It’s not fair. They should have a law about it. Smacks of colonialism.” Fortunately, for it’s sake, joints aren’t brains, and it just ached slightly. It didn’t know why. Sometimes that’s best.
Felix had taken a pretty sociopath on a road trip once, and laughed when she coldly stated her condition. He didn’t really think they existed. They do. Fortunately, the only thing he was robbed of was a pleasant drive. Her favorite color was gray. While they sat at an intersection of similar hue, he had tried to make the case for the vibrancy of life found in the complexity of it all. She had said it sounded exhausting. He knew she meant he was. But, sometimes even a sociopath is right, and it’s best if a knee doesn’t get discouraged.
The echoes of the folding table died away, and Felix raised his eyebrows at his neighbor.
“Didn’t see that coming! Somebody should write an essay about how bloody inconvenient these table legs are. Hit ‘em every time! Reminds me of that time I was out salsa dancing…”
Josh