I've decided to start this email installment of Pat v. Nature by turning my traditional parable style (and, yes, I think that's the style that these stories would best fall into as I learned a few weeks ago in the Children's Lit. class I'm teaching that parables aren't just for you religious types, so don't start harking for the church to declare anathema on me) on its ear by starting with my moral: Always wear a helmet, or Don't let your children enjoy too much science fiction.
It all began, as usual, with my bike ride this morning. The weather has been freakishly warm here so far this fall, so I've been trying my best to make the most of it and muster (which, in my effort to spell things correctly so that my dear family won't spend ALL of their time doing it for me, I learned is also the name for a group of peacocks) the initiative to get some exercise. Just to set the stage a little, let me explain the equipment that I was using because it will be important here in a minute for visual effect.
I own a mountain bike. There are, obviously, no mountains and barely any hills in this area, but mountain bikes are much cooler looking than street bikes. Street bikes, I've always thought, are for athletes or posers. Mountain bikes are also for posers (like me), but at least they (the bikes themselves) are also pretending to be something far cooler than they really are. They are the SUV of the bike world, being not quite equipped to handle what they are supposedly intended for (rough terrain biking--ask anyone who's hit a small pothole or railroad track while on a mountain bike and they will agree with me completely) while at the same time being less well-equipped to handle even normal biking tasks (they are built to, again, supposedly withstand shock, so they take that much more effort to propel their extra girth). Mountain bikes--at least the ones that I've seen, and I am in no way an expert--have a secondary set of handles that stick up at a forward forty degree angle from the ends of the standard handles. This little detail is also important later on. At any rate, I am sure I look very cool riding around on my bike, especially when I wear what I was wearing today.
Because I have a notoriously short attention span, I need entertainment even while exercising or I almost immediately lose interest. For the past two years, I've relied on my own brain and a short repertoire of seven memorized songs, which I always sing in a certain order to myself. Because I am also panting between each lyrical phrase, this set of seven songs usually takes me almost exactly as long to sing as I want to be exercising. Recently, however, I found a portable CD player designed for use during exercise. It came with a case complete with a Velcro strap that is too small to wrap around ANY body part for security--so I strap it to the bar on my bike--and a set of wrap around ear pieces, meaning they wrap around the back of the ear, holding the earphones in place. This is great because they still allow me to wear my helmet. I always wear my helmet because I am a naturally cautious person and because I am somewhat paranoid for the following reasons: A) Certain special interest groups or political parties are trying to kill me; 2) Nature is trying to kill me; and %) I am clumsy and fully expect to plummet head first into a ravine at the first possible opportunity. To top this all off, I was also wearing my sunglasses because my largely indoor lifestyle has made the harsh rays of the sun unacceptable to my sensitive eyes.
Again, I looked cool.
So there I was, singing along to my slow jamz (spell check suggests that I mean “logjams”), pedaling into gusts of up to 30 mph. Growing up, I vividly remember that I wore a dubiously named jean style called Husky. These were, since there is no need to pull punches, for the chubby kids. They had elastic waists to accommodate a “growing child.” And kids KNEW that these jeans were meant for fatties, which meant near constant teasing on the playground (“Hey, hey, hey! It’s Paaaaaat Albers!” they yelled. Give me a name that can’t help but be confused with the morbidly obese Bill Cosby cartoon character and put me in Husky jeans and you have a recipe for body image issues. Excuse me while I weep a few bitter tears and then get over myself).
Despite a few years in high school when I think I was borderline anorexic, I’ve managed to maintain my “husky” stature throughout my life. Usually this doesn’t affect me that greatly. I am well-built for moving heavy objects, which means that I usually get to be on the most unwieldy end of the washing machine when someone is moving (unless Jon is around and I can big brother him into doing the hard work for me, since he is also one of nature’s heavy lifters), but that’s about it, unless I’m riding my bike, and especially in a brisk wind. Then, being built like a mainsail has its drawbacks.
To compensate for my broadness, and because it is too uncomfortable to lean forward on a mountain bike to make myself moderately aerodynamic, I have adapted a tacking method of bike riding—moving subtly back and forth as I head into the wind, I am able to reduce the wind resistance slightly, thus wearing myself out almost exactly as much as I would if I pedaled straight into the wind thanks to the extra work that I’m creating. Not the most brilliant method, I’m sure, but it’s what I do.
It was while swerving to and fro this morning that I noticed all of the leaves on the ground. Thanks to the aforementioned freakish weather, Fall has been dragging on forever here. The upswing is that we’re getting some truly spectacular colors from leaves that usually turn brown and die, or die and turn brown, however that works. The, um, downswing is that the leaves may never stop falling this year and completely covering the terrain. And the road around the park this morning was littered with tree trash despite the relatively high winds. If I weren’t using all of my extra brain cells to remember things like the theme song to Small Wonder (“She’s fantastic, made of plastic, microchips here and there.”) and who sang “Lady in Red” (Chris de Burgh), I might be able to remember some specific tree names to better fill in my Setting information here. I’m sure there were plenty of cottonwood leaves—I know that one because we have a cottonwood tree next to our house whose roots have tapped, if not the fires, then surely the disposition of Hell. I’m sure there are some leaves from plywood trees and gnarlybarks or whatever out there too. Who knows. Well, lots of people probably, just not me.
As I meandered back and forth, I started to play a game, seeing if I could swing around as many leaves as I could. Eventually, I came to picture the image of myself doing this from a third person perspective, wearing my glasses, helmet and earphones. I was obviously a space pilot of some sort, careening through a dangerous asteroid field. All I was missing was a microphone to speak into, but I didn’t have any trouble imagining that was there too.
Of course then I grabbed onto the side handles, since they would make for ideal flight steering. I could even put my thumbs on top of the handles to make like I was firing some sort of weapon. From here I added sound effects—“whoosh”ing occasionally as I veered around a leaf and “pew, pew”ing as I blasted some unsuspecting ne’er do well who thought he (or she, space is a very equal opportunity employer, we’ve learned) was going to do me a grievous disservice.
I even began to create a character for myself. I haven’t come up with a name, but it will probably be a tough sounding, single syllable first name followed by a surprisingly sensitive sounding last name—like Spif Sparkle or Rock Kittenfluff. I volunteered for service because the galaxy was at war and every able-bodied person was expected to serve. I was one of the best pilots out there, but I had a real chip on my shoulder—possibly because my parents were forced to work in mines or I was an orphan or something like that—and had a real problem with authority. Pretty stereotypical, of course, but this was developed over the course of about twenty minutes worth of bike riding, so what can you do.
Then I came up on an entire squadron of enemy fighters. They were sitting, unawares, on the road ahead of me. This squadron of about a hundred blackbirds—and possibly a few other birds mixed in to fill specialized field tasks—was filling the road in front of me. I’ve actually come to think of blackbirds as traveling in squadrons instead of flocks over the past few years because, during the month or so they are migrating through our area, they constantly strafe and bombard everything around our house with their seedy ordinance. But I suspect that the squadrons in our area have also recruited a few specialist dive-bombers, perhaps barn swallows. I’ve seen swallows fly down and peck a passing cat just for the fun of it before, but I’ve never seen a blackbird swoop down and try to hit anything squarely. They are precision instruments in that respect, designed to do a delicate task that they perform without flaw (at least that I had seen, probably there were scores of brain damaged swallows out there who had tried, unsuccessfully, to hone their dive-bombing skills). And, today, something was definitely in a swooping mood in the group of birds that was in front of me.
As I dodged the last few leaves and entered into the clearing, I set my sites on the squadron ahead and opened fire. As I grew closer, they scattered, obviously afraid of my terrible, lasery wrath. Or so I thought. After they took off, most appeared to flutter away, allowing my mind to stop paying attention to them and shift its focus to the fact that I was still exercising and was starting to wear out, thus distracting me for a few moments. A few of them must have decided to circle back to watch for just such a distraction on my part, because a few moments later I felt a “thunk” on the top of my helmet. Startled, I looked around, wondering if someone had thrown a rock at me and saw the tale end of a bird darting back towards a small group that had lighted in a neighboring tree. With that, I pedaled my uneasy butt right out of there before a Hitchcockian moment could occur, and I never looked back.
After some consideration, I decided that neither side in Pat v. Nature deserved any points for this round. Granted, Nature did take an actual, physical stab at removing part of my scalp, but only after I had caught them resting on their laurels and destroyed no fewer than a dozen of them in my head. I decided to call it a draw, at least until a technology exists that will allow me to mount working laser cannons on the front of my bike. Then those suckers better watch out.
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