“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” ~ Marie Curie
Once upon a time, before time was collected by government agencies and shredded into suffocating regulations, a man fell into a well. His name, Bob, is unimportant because before he fell, he never discovered, mainly because he wasn’t looking, what gift he brought into the world on the day he was born. Presumably, he is still falling because nobody heard a splash.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that he grabbed for the old oaken bucket, a viable hope to be sure, but it failed him because he never got around to replacing the old, frayed rope with a sturdy new rope from the seed and feed. Other than his falling into it, nobody had used the well for years. New ropes cost money. So did covering over the well or even placing a sign that said: “watch your step.”
Calls to his cell phone go directly to voice mail. “Hello. Your call is very important to me. I’ll get back to you as soon as I hit bottom.”
His wife, Grace, told police he was falling before he fell into the well. Never could get a handle on his purpose or his life’s story because–truth be told–his fields were always too wet to plough and he had proven on numerous occasions that he couldn’t dance the dance, much less walk the walk. “I felt like I always had to push him to do anything,” she said.
After the prescribed amount of time, she had him declared dead, inherited the mule and his forty-acre farm, both of which were sold to a developer for $267,613.40. He transformed the wet fields into a mall for the rich and famous who never bothered to show up.
The epitaph in his tombstone reads: “He fell from Grace.”
I knew Bob before he fell into the well. He had hopes and dreams, all that stuff. As the Asian bar girls said of many sailors in liberty ports during the Vietnam War, he was a “butterfly man,” going from flower to flower before falling away into a new desire or vision. I suggested many things when he asked for help. He didn’t like them, swore up and down he didn’t need them even though he said often, “Life is nothing but falling without a parachute.”
One might say Bob’s true gift to the world was falling into a well. If so, perhaps he will serve as an example to others who are prone to fall into wells. I doubt it since there aren’t many books about people whose primary accomplishment if life was falling into a well. What a paradox: those who need to hear his incomplete story will never know about it.
“Well,” somebody says during a pause in the conversation. “That’s a deep subject,” somebody else replies.
If they only knew before it was too late.
–Malcolm
Malcolm R. Campbell
Publisher: Thomas-Jacob Publishing
In 1959 when I was a high school student in Tallahassee, Florida and my father was the dean of the Florida State University School of journalism, the state’s board of regents (then called the board of control) decreed that FSU’s journalism school would close. The reason, which was never spelt out, was probably politics. Purportedly, the state thought it was spending too much money duplicating degrees at Florida State and the University of Florida in Gainesville.
I’m not sure we’ve come up with a gallows’ humor catchphrase to succinctly remind ourselves how much COVID impacts our lives on multiple levels. Perhaps “Vaccine Days and Shutdown Months” or “The Days of Wine and Masks.” World Wars I and II brought almost every normal thing to an abrupt halt. In a different way, so has the pandemic. Either way, the deaths and the wounded are real.
Since my wife and I are reporting to the county health department tomorrow afternoon for our second Moderna shot, I browsed through the side effects and didn’t find “feels like being kicked by a mule.” What a relief. Yet, there’s been talk. Others have dropped dead, possibly, and this seems to be better than being kicked by a mule. Or, maybe these are just myths and legends and the shot feels like a scoop of rocky road ice cream.
According to online information, if you live in the Silicon Valley town of Atherton, you probably already know that the average cost of a house there is $7 million and that 94027 is the most affluent zip code in the country. Marketers, political pollsters, and online data dealers also know it. Everyone who wants your money or your vote knows where you live and wants to get to know you better.
There are two kinds of Facebook quizzes, those created by users which usually consist of a list of countries, states, National Parks, widely known attractions, etc., and ask how many of these have you visited. The other is the silly quiz operated by who knows who that asks a question like which historical character were you in a past life; to find out, you click on a link, answer a few questions, and then end up with a graphic on your profile page showing a famous person with words like Malcolm used to be (or is just like) Teddy Rosevelt.
The user-made quizzes are kind of fun, but more trouble because to play, you have to copy, say–a list of states out of one user’s profile, paste it in yours, delete the YES answers from the previous respondent, and then type in YES next to each state you’ve visited. Since I’ve been to every state except for Alaska and Maine, I usually leave the YES answers from the previous user and add my own.
Malcolm's Round Table 