GREETINGS! I’ve been laying low, blinds drawn against a merciless sun, hanging out in my frigid AC, with my iced tea, and my outdated TV. In other words, I live in Texas. In other words, I just took a little vacation, and rolled through the second third of 2022, the third that seems to take up way more than its share of the pie around here if you ask me.
We broke record highs again and again, and ended up with the hottest May, the hottest June, and the hottest July ever measured in Austin, Texas.
Then a week or so ago it started raining. A couple good rains, at least in my neighborhood, meaning – just what we needed – not catastrophic and not on the heels of desert-causing droughts or apocalyptic fires like other places here in the US and across the world. Ours were, ‘just-right’ rains.
And it stopped popping the thermometer every day. Although, you never know when that might start up again.
Quite a summer.
The new normal.
It reminded me of a little story I started a while back but never finished. So, I dug it out of my closet and got to work.
Hope you enjoy.
-Bill
September 2, 2022
MY BRIEF BUT MEMORABLE LIFE AS A SPONGE
I was sitting with my phone and my notebooks and pens and pencils and the clutter of my breakfast all around me at the diner. And I was drinking my coffee, more and more coffee all the time. And I was writing like crazy and drawing little pictures with circles and arrows pointing and lines going off in directions. Everything was connected. It was all working! It was all important! Everything was perfect. And then my phone rang. And I reached across the table. . . And that’s when I knocked over my coffee.
Coffee was everywhere all at once!
And I had my phone in one hand and napkins dabbing with the other hand –
dabbing here dabbing there –
The coffee was running into my notebooks, across my papers! The words were smearing, disappearing!
The lines were melting, the arrows were drooping, everything was pooling and drooling, and I wished –
A sponge! A sponge! That’s all I need!
I wish I was a sponge!
I don’t know why I said that. I meant to say I wish I HAD a sponge But it came out wrong. . . One little slip . . . I was in a hurry! The arrows were pointing down! And I wished I WAS a sponge. What can I say.
As soon as I wished it my phone was gone and my hand was holding a big new blue sponge and then my hand sponged blue, and my arm got airy and full of holes and my cheeks turned light and scruffy all with dents and my hair got puffed and waved out in the air like octopus nozzles and I was a total sponge!
I had never thought about sponges much. I had only just used them, that’s all. But as soon as I was one, I could see that sponges are the most misunderstood people in the world. Nobody understands us sponges. Everybody thinks we’re gushy. Everybody thinks were moist and soggy all the time. But it isn’t true. Really, we’re dry, dry, dry
So, in that very first instant, when my sponge fingers wrapped around my sponge phone, and my legs and arms and body and face and nose and everything got light and full of airy holes and pockets, in just that very instant I was so thirsty – that I slapped my face right down on the table and slurped up all the coffee that had spilled out there. And I slurped up my glass of water too! My head swelled up like a watermelon! I didn’t care what I looked like. And I didn’t care about pens and pencils or the notebooks with words and circles and arrows and everything connected and how everything worked. All I cared about was thirsty thirst. So I soaked up all the water out of all the glasses off everybody’s table in the diner. And I soaked up everybody’s coffee too. People were angry! They were yelling. They wanted their water. They wanted their coffee. They were thirsty, too! Everybody was looking at me. I was swelling up, with coffee stains on my cheeks and fingers. I knew they didn’t understand how thirsty I was. I knew they thought I was weird. I knew they wanted to throw me in jail or maybe something worse. So I ran out the door and down the road. Every puddle was missing as I ran past. Everybody’s lawns looked like they needed watering for some reason after I went by.. All the birds wondered where to get a drink. Mosquitos disappeared. Dogs howled at their empty water bowls. It was hot and I was thirster and thirstier as I ran down the street. A guy was washing his car in the driveway. I slurped up all his soapy water in one loud gulp. He yelled at me, but I was already gone, running fast now, headed for the lake. Soap bubbles followed behind.
At the lake little ducks were swimming through the reeds along the shore. Herons were there too, looking for their breakfast. Coots were bobbing up and down, and the clouds and all the blue sky up behind them were reflecting off the surface of the lake. It was beautiful! But it was the beautifulness of all that wet, watery, moisty, misty, liquid that made my heart swell with joy and my knees get rubbery, because I knew that soon my thirst would be quenched at last.
I threw myself down on the shore and stuck in all my fingers and poked in my head over the edge and I started to sponge. I slurped and sucked and savored and foozled. I wheezed and tasted and fizzled and bobbled and nozzled and bubbulated and drankulated and nipped I sipped. I guzzled and burped and coughed and spluttered and glugged and slugged and swallowed and wallowed! And all that time I was sighing big sighs and saying loud exclamations like AHHHHH! and OOOO BOY! and WOW, MAMA! Because it was just what I needed, it was perfect, and it went on and on and on and on and then . . . I was done. Finally, finally, I finally had enough. I wasn’t thirsty anymore. I rolled over on my back and let out a long sigh, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, and looked up at the sky. Beautiful blue as far as I could see. Wait a second! What happened to the clouds? I looked around. The clouds were all below my head! Birds were flying down there too! I stood up and looked around. I was as big as a mountain! Way down below me was the lake. It was brown and ugly, like a long puddle of oozy muck. The ducks and coots and herons were crying and honking at me. They were standing in mud! Where’s our water?? Where’s our water? they were saying with their quacks. Way out in the middle of the sad brown puddle that used to be the lake, the boaters were shaking their paddles at me like clubs. They spluttered and muttered. Their boats were all stuck! And all around them in the muddy moosh the fishes were jumping and flopping up and down. I could hear them calling in their faint and light little fishy whispers, “Help us! Help us!” they cried with their round little mouths. They were drowning in air!
I didn’t think. I just started squeezing everything, squeezing tight as I could. I squeezed my eyes. Tears popped out and bucket-sized drops splashed on the ground. Water was gushing everywhere because I was squeezing and straining and oozing and draining, sprinkling and dribbling and trickling and soaking. I tinkled! I rained! I was drenching and watering, and drizzling and squizzling, flooding and fizzling and spritzing and whizzing, moisturizing and dampening and irrigating and lathering and slathering and slobbering and drooling. I spurted and spouted and flumed and spewmed and finally, finally, I was wrung. I was done, I was through, I was finished. I was an empty sponge. And all of the water was back in the lake.
The fishes were smiling little round smiles, blowing bubbles, and breathing their watery breaths. The boaters were laughing and paddling around, and the birds were all quacking and happy again and splashing the mud off their wings. The sky was blue, and the clouds and the birds were all up in the air where they were supposed to be, and I was all back down where I was supposed to be, looking up, back to my regular sponge-size self again, just standing there, just looking around.
Everything was back the way it was. Everything was fine. Almost perfect in fact, when just a teeny bit at a time my sponge phone started to tingle, and my sponge mouth started feeling a little dusty, just a tad dry. and I thought maybe I could take just one teeny, little sip. . . Oh no! No, no, no! Let’s not go through that again. . .! This time I didn’t make a mistake. I wished I was back being my own self again. And I was! At the diner with my phone and coffee and notebooks, the pens and pencils and circles with arrows and everything connected. Everything perfect. And I was! And no spilling! I would be careful from now on. I promise! And I have been. Really!
Bill Jeffers August 2022
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