of The Inn of Stormy Nights
Duck Dreams
If I could wander the Earth as a duck
I would keep swimming until I’d waddle.
Waddle and waddle. To make humans laugh.
That’s all I’d want. To make humans laugh.
To share a piece of their world.
From my wet, wobbly corner of quacks.
I will keep wandering until I find one.
A duck friend. To make a quack orchestra with.
To swim two by two. To waddle then and more.
If I could wander the Earth as a duck.
I would keep on swimming.
Students are, as I am well acquainted, (being one myself), masters at saving pennies in every possible manner and almost all students come with an annoyance toward anyone who deigns to waste whatever they are personally in a curious habit of saving.
Have you ever seen someone reuse yogurt containers, collect recycled paper for their note taking, or store ten different hair elastics safely on an arm? A girl I sat next to in one class always had the habit of arriving fifteen minutes early, so as to give her full range of the classroom, undisturbed by her fellow peers, to forage for all the manner of leftover pencils, pens and erasers. It caused her as much distress as it would an animal lover hearing of a cat abused, to see a pen missing its cap, lying forgotten between the corner desks of the back two rows.
Once she proudly showed me three yellow 2HB pencils, unmarred and unsharpened, which she had discovered earlier that morning. Before adopting them as her own however, she made sure to ask our class, when the room had filled with its learned occupants. Did these golden devices belong to anyone? Getting no reply, she kept them, and to this day she worships the sight of them in her pencil case.
You can always tell a student from any other individual by the way they stare down the spoons dishing into the cranberry sauce over a Thanksgiving dinner or the run-away peas which lay forgotten under a sumptuously endowed slice of turkey. Their hands itch towards their own silverware, bursting with the desire not let those peas be forgotten, or to lap up the last liquid dredges of cranberry sauce pooling by the mashed potatoes on their neighbour’s plate.
I for one conform to this mode of annoyance on quite a regular basis. Have you ever watched someone eat your most cherished cooking and then leave a field of crumbs and islands of choice bits they chose not to rescue with their utensils? As my mother always said, it showed no humane gratitude to leave enough food on a plate that could feed a whole family in Africa. That said; I do my utmost to clean my plate within range of propriety. I carefully strategize which portion will leave the most crumbs and which substance is a good mop. Only then will I begin to make inroads into my treasure box of provisions.
Currently my treasure box makes a motley crew of garden tools behind the brick storehouse of the backyard. Tomorrow my treasure box will make a modest marvel of pocelain dog statues from Avon. Yesterday was a treasure box of leftover toiletries from my massage-therapist housemate.
Alice Alexandria counted socks. She believed you could never have enough, and the infernal washing machine down the hall was not to be trusted. The most important rule of life, she always told me, came down to have a superior brace of matching socks. After each load of laundry she routinely married each couple of stripped socks and then she would slip off her boots, roll up her denim, and slide on a fresh pair; lest she come across an acquaintance.