From a Martian's Perspective

From a Martian’s Perspective

Question:  Why did the snake cross the road?  Answer:  I don’t know if he actually made it across the road but I sure as hell am not going over there to ask him!  It seems when I noticed him, and other cars zoomed right by him, he was having a “traction issue” with the surface of the road that was probably, oh, about 95+ degrees HOT at the time.  I kind of felt sorry for him.  Psych.  Not really.

There are times when I think to myself:  if I was a Martian visiting from another planet, what would puzzle me the most about this land?  First and foremost, it would be the strange obsession with one joke in America:  “Why did the chicken cross the road?”  It is classic because:  a) chickens do, indeed cross the road; b) nobody knows why due to the communication impasse we have with poultry; and c) the listener really anticipates that you are going to finally tell them a really, really funny answer to the question – and yet no one ever does.  Why this joke has lived so long is really a testimony to residual HOPE in the  human heart:  we HOPE someone, eventually, tells us a great reason…. But so far the ball is still in their court (the chickens).

Animals should not cross the road unsupervised.  But I can say this for sure and for certain:  woodchucks shouldn’t be allowed to DRIVE unsupervised!  And I am not referencing animal woodchucks.  I am openly satirizing the brand of human being that drives a pick-up truck, has only a few teeth that are not even necessarily situated next to each other, and live mostly on the outskirts of true civilization … and with good reason.  Here are my two best wood chuck stories:

I was driving to my dentist appointment last week – at the designated speed limit, which, as intended, gave me ample time to stop for the fiasco.  On this long country road which runs next to the Erie Canal (yes, that Erie Canal with a mule named Sal) there had been construction the prior week which led me to have a wary eye as I was driving.  You know, in New York, they actually have a sign that just says:  “Bump.”  And usually it should have actually said:  “CRATER.”  So I was watching for the bump or a sign or something and then I saw a Tree Service truck on the side of the road.  Heckle and Jeckle were parked next to a telephone pole that is in two pieces, still standing vertically, but snapped with jagged edges.  It is hard to imagine what mishap caused this situation but I am guessing it would have won the Top Prize on “Funniest Home Videos.” 

In a farm-sized driveway on the opposite side of the road sits an empty school bus.  A man resembling Ichabod Crane getting up from his long nap was walking around the front lawn.  I am hoping the two stories are not connected in any way.  Then as I came to a gentle stop, I looked up to see the wire from the telephone pole hanging mighty low – think “brush the top of my windshield” low and you get the idea.  One of the guys, with his bare hand, lifted the wire up so that the west-bound car could drive under.  Then he dropped it.  So I remained sitting there in the eastbound lane, waiting.  And all of a sudden from behind me, two Woodchuck Cowboys blaze around me in their big arse vehicles and JAM their gas pedals to go somehow through or under that wire.  I cannot repeat the phrase I said when I saw this.  It was sheer horror at their lack of patience!  The first guy made it under.  The second guy blazed through and I watched the wire fling something else up over the top of the truck.  I do not know if it was one of those triangular ice melters we have on our telephone wires here or what it was.  It just flicked up and over the truck and he blazed on.  

These types of incidents give me chest pains.  I really cannot grasp what was so important that they would be so foolish – maybe they were headed to a happy hour or a cow auction somewhere?  It was just crazy.  Eventually one of the tree service guys grabbed a metal post (??? to lift a wire that has some sort of energy in it???) and lifted the wire up for me.  Otherwise I’d still be sitting there.  I am kind of wondering if they are still standing there.  You can’t make this stuff up.

The other story is a tale of Woodchuck Camping.  (No details have been omitted for the purpose of political correctness or accuracy in journalistic reporting.  Again, you can’t make this stuff up.)     I had taken one of my dogs camping on Lake Ontario for a weekend.  In the morning, the guy two campsites over from mine walked over to the Hispanic young adults at the in-between-us campsite and proceeded to make his awkward introduction.  He had on jeans, a sleeveless tee shirt, and was nursing a can of cold and hopsy already at 9am.  The young adults were sitting in a friendly circle just chatting when he walked over and asked where they were from and then made some reference that presumed they did not work for a living.  It was like throwing a rock through a plate glass window to say hello.  BUT, they were incredibly gracious and informed him they worked in Hartford and had the week off from work.  “That’s cool.  Mind if I sit down?” 

Again, the picture of hospitality, they welcomed him into their circle.  He was a world apart from them.  And, truth be told, from most people I know…. He was just really, really rough around the edges.  I mean, when you run out of Nascar stories, what else IS there to talk about?

Later in the day I was entertaining some friends for the afternoon and dinner on the campfire.  They got up to leave and go back to civilization.  I asked one of my guy friends, “Pizza Dave,” if he’d walk me to the restroom before he left.  We had a bit of a moment earlier in the afternoon when he patronizingly  tried to correct me that it was “not nice” for me to call that guy a woodchuck.  Whatever.  Dave didn’t have to listen to the bragging and the nonsense all morning long. 

We walked in the dark along the unpaved camp road, each site marked by a fire pit near the edge of the street.  On the way past that third site there came a horrible snorting noise that made Pizza Dave jump a few inches off the ground, still nervous in the Great Outdoors.  He turned to me and practically shouted:  “What was THAT?  A BEAR?!”  I didn’t flinch for a second:  “No.  A Woodchuck.”

The guy had moved his lawnchair next to his fire pit and fell asleep there.  I kind of doubt anyone told him that mosquitoes do not consider snoring a repellant.  I bet he was one big welt when he got up in the morning… unless, of course, woodchucks don’t use deodorant. 

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A Brief Moment of Joy

A Brief Moment of Joy

It was like a family portrait of a brief moment of joy.  I slowed my vehicle down behind an old fire engine that was making its way rather deliberately through a small neighborhood on the outskirts of a city.  If you stretched out the viewfinder of your mind on this particular street for about ten miles you would have:  undeveloped country, old farmhouses that have seen better days sitting next to very suburban-looking colonial homes, one of those horse-and-buggy warning signs, an old country bridge with owls on it that crested up and then eased you down into the poorer neighborhood I was traveling through before you reached the cleaned-up city.  It was everything about human life in Central NY all jammed into one area.  (And if you are wondering about the owls on the bridge:  they are to scare away the avian poop factories known as “pigeons”.  Pigeons are like the energizer bunny:  they keep going, and going, and going …. only in a different way that doesn’t involve batteries.)

As this relic of a fire truck in front of me slowed for an intersection, I glanced to my left and saw four happy children waving and smiling at the firemen.  Then I observed a bit more – the children were sitting on steps of a dilapidated front porch and three out of four of them were holding very young kittens.  A fourth kitten was investigating a bicycle tire that was part of the ensemble leaning against the front porch step.  All things considered, this was the most joyful thing I’ve seen in God knows how long.  It was a picture-perfect Sunday morning.  And yet it was just a moment in time.

Within the hour, the sermon I was listening to also brought tears to my eyes.  The priest was telling of Archbishop D’Souza who had observed Mother Teresa of Calcutta one morning.  A small orphan boy was being cleaned-up by one of the sisters and giving her an incredibly hard time.  The child was struggling with the sister and finally was hitting her.  Mother Teresa from across the room had been eyeing the development of the event.  She went over and scooped the child into her arms and wordlessly held him in her embrace.  Finally, after almost a half-hour of wordless holding, the child began to cry in her arms.  Then he settled himself down in the safety and security of the love of a true mother. 

I sat there wondering what it is that makes a child that angry.  Was it orphaned?  Was it injured by someone?  Or was it just willful like the adorable little girl in the bench in front of me in church who was mad-as-heck that her mother wouldn’t let her use her “outside voice” while the prayers were going on in church?  But really, why should any child, anywhere in the world feel the kind of angst that young Indian boy was revealing?  And yet doesn’t the world we live in have just as much brokenness as it does beauty?  And perhaps we are better able to see beauty against the backdrop of pain and struggle.  Does suffering make us bitter people, or better people ~ the choice is ours. 

Just last night I was reading about William Donohue’s debate with one of Mother Teresa’s most (and among the arguable few) vehement detractors:  Christopher Hitchens.  So it was ironic that the story of her gentle love would cross my path this morning.  I wonder if she had hugged Hitchens like that, if he would have broken down sobbing.  Sometimes the heart that hates is the heart that hurts the most.  When we are on the receiving end of that, it is natural for us to want to push away the ones that bring their anger to the fore.  But it is supernatural to greet that disguised pain with love and win a soul.

Later that day, I drove the opposite way on the street to see the house one more time.  This time, there were adults there.  A man sitting against the porch wall pouring the contents of a silver beverage can down his throat.  No kittens in sight.  Children scattered around and one adorable girl about 9 years old sitting on the sidewalk wailing her curly-haired head off.  She was only hours after smiling and waving to the fire truck drivers and her little world had a completely different look to it.  In India, I could have held her.  In America, I’d probably get arrested.  I have no answers for this.  And I hate that.

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The 3 Night Visitors of Early September

The Three Night Visitors of Early September

He sat there among the rocks perfectly still.  And as I type this I wonder if he had ever been spoken to before by my kind.  Had his mother told him, in her own way, that people from my world should not be communicated with, and that he should ignore me?  Had his father said that my people were a danger to him – and that his very life was jeopardized if he even acknowledged me?  Some children might throw rocks, or women might scream and jump up and down in a silly, non-productive way – and perhaps accidentally cause him to go to the Great Beyond?  Who knows the thoughts of the average toad as it sits among the stones, in natural camouflage, hoping to go unnoticed as it waits for bugs or whatever it is that toads do on dark muggy nights when people should be in their dwellings?

But I looked down at him in unfeigned curiosity, without fear, and said, “Hey.  I see you sitting there.”  He tried to flatten himself a bit, but was too plump to pull it off.  His belly seemed askew.  Frankly it was kind of like a Plus size woman trying to fit into tight clothing:  you may be able to move the bulk and shift it, but you can’t make it go away by wishing its invisibility.  Physics gets you every time.

I observed for a few moments and marveled at his speckling.  Then I dashed into the house for my ipad to grab a picture of him.  Even by the light of the lamp post, it was impossible to get a picture of him.  It came out the same as a great picture I heard of entitled:  “Black bear shoveling coal at midnight.”  No toad.  You just have to take my word for it.  And I may never see him again.

Just the week before, as I came up on my front step at night, a frog appeared.  He was in an even funnier predicament than his toad cousin from last night because he did not blend in ANY way with his surroundings.  The corner of my porch, at a 90 degree angle, provided a goal of sorts for him to commandeer.  He managed to use his Super Frog Suction Cup Feet and stick to the puckered aluminum siding.  And I imagine he was having a field day in the corner grabbing the little bugs that flock to the light of my kitchen window late at night.  They are so minute that if I leave the window up and the screen down they can pass through the screen to come to the light.  There’s a lesson in their somewhere.  I’ll let you, my reader, work with it.

I don’t want to bog down in speculation, for there was a third amphibian to make his appearance.  Like the third of the ghosts to visit Ebenezeer Scrooge, he had the most impact on my tired psyche.  After I saw him, I went back to bed and laughed until I had tears in my eyes.  Well, perhaps I was over-tired.  It was 3:30 in the morning and one of the dogs requested a potty run.  I dragged myself out of bed, through the house, and out the door to the dog pen.  There was on the threshold some sort of debris.  At quick glance I thought it was a piece of dog poo.  Then I leaned down a bit and saw that it was a very small frog.  Thus for the reasons of both his appearance, and my reason for being out with the dogs, I nicknamed this new species The Crap Frog.

My sense of humor is not typical; I am guilty as charged.  But I will say this, he made me think.  How many times are we just about our own business and people who don’t know us judge us or our purposes.  They judge us by what they see, and what their interpretation of that is.  We disappear off their stage and they never got to learn that we were the best singer in the swamp – or whatever it is that frogs put on their Amphibian resumes.  My three night visitors came to teach me, perhaps, to pay attention to the humble ones among us.  They may not speak the way we ask them to, but they have their own purpose and mission…. Should we choose to accept it.

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