In a small town, just like this one, and in a time very much like today, Manny found himself struggling with a freshly dawning thought. A notion so subtle, it was almost impossible to put his finger on it. Perhaps, “found himself” isn’t the right word, well maybe, not just yet. He could feel it on the tip of his tongue. That ever-elusive, somewhat intrusive, invading thought which peeked through his blinds at night, followed him down the dark sidewalk at every turn, and even crept into his bathroom stall at work. It was there within the lines of his newspaper, frustrating his attention span and diverting his focus from the urgent headlines of the day. Soon, his places of refuge from this constant specter shrank away one by one until he was left with a terrible realization. The thought that he would have to face it, this, whatever it was, made him squirm.
How could it have come to this? Manny, at forty years old, realized for the first time that this was his life. The holding pattern, the routine, a lightning bolt of panic split through it all. The anxiety, the shame and hopelessness melted into a cold sweat of despair. It wasn’t an attack per se, but an awakening of sorts. Was this the midlife crisis that sitcoms riffed on all throughout his youth? There was nothing funny about this. His life was empty. He was not lonely, for his days were filled with social obligations, appointments, the necessary sort, but lacked the type of events that he truly needed, the nourishing kind. When he woke up each day, it was always the same. An hour at the gym, the mindless commute to work, the swiping on socials where tapping emojis now replaced the camaraderie of his friends (ha, what friends?). Then, the eight hours of staring into a glowing screen, escaping two or three times a day by ducking into the break room for room-temperature creamer suspended like clouds in his machine brewed single serve cups of coffee. After work, he ran errands, the obligatory dinner time, and then winding down before bed, often decompressing in the easy chair until dozing off to the mindless chatter and strobing light of the TV.
Where had he gone wrong? Certainly this was not the great vision that his ancestors had in mind when they set out into this brave new world. Their sacrifice, generations of scrimping and saving; their hungry, dead eyes watching him loaf and languish within the apathy of mundane indifference. They stare at him, mouths watering with bated breath, on the verge of tears, imploring him to take a bite of that apple which they could only imagine beholding in this land of endless opportunity. Life had become one safe choice for him carved out of the avoidance of any mild discomfort, enthralled to the insatiable trappings of instant gratification. Their fire, his spark of life, smoldered and choked under the peaty moss laden logs of mediocrity.
Manny recalled a nature documentary he’d seen once as a child, where a bushman, thirsty for clean cold drinking water, tricks a baboon into revealing a hidden spring. The clever tribesman carved out a small hole in a mound of earth with his walking stick and laid a trap by placing a handful of salt crystals within. The hole was just large enough for the monkey to slip his agile hand through, but once the baboon had filled his fist, he found himself stuck. Unwilling to drop the crystals and flustered by the approaching captor, the poor creature thrashes and cries until a leash slides over his neck. Once subdued, the man feeds the baboon all the salt crystals that its little heart desires, then sets it loose only to follow the thirsty creature to the source of that free flowing water.
In half delirium, Manny could think of similar stories from different parts of the world where such traps led to a deadlier outcome for the primate in question. The Brazilian cambuca trap uses a banana in a hollowed out gourd while the South Indian version employs handfuls of rice as bait. Could he overcome such snares in his modern life? Maybe learn to let go of the shiny objects holding him in place and stop all of this flailing; no longer leading others to drink dry his wellspring of life?
He fought for hours to calm his brain and find rest that night. It was well past three o’clock in the morning and sleep seemed just out of reach. All of this ran ceaselessly through his mind as he closed his eyes, yet again, and prepared for the next day dawning. Here in this moment, he had the choice: to muster up his courage, jump back into the driver’s seat and seize the day or to continue on this listless road to nowhere. Just as he was about to decide with great impetus, momentum, and conviction at his back, Manny yawned wide and deep, as he uncontrollably drifted off to sleep, dreaming wildly away until morning.
by D. Ryan Lafferty
Note. Originally published in the People Papers column, Literary Crumbs, January, 2024.
Literary Crumbs: Poems & Short Stories to Savor by D. Ryan Lafferty 