jumpingfish

This 

source: Tom Tomorrow, hat tip: anticap

brings this to mind.

Credit: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

At the door, we ran thru the checklist. Lunch? Keys? Coffee? Phone (required for logging in)? I have been known to forget things.

“Brain.” I mumbled. 

Trudy smiled and gave me a smooch. “Pretty morning,” she said, pointing at rose-tinted clouds in the west.

“Pretty morning,” I dutifully repeated.

…

I must tell you, the morning commute has been an unexpected bonus of teaching at Austin High. Not only is it brief, but there’s only a single lane change, and that into a sparse exit lane at the very end. Not hectic.

I turned on cruise control, leaving two car-lengths ahead for the speeding tech bros weaving to work in their Teslas. I turned up Roberta Flack. I took a sip of hot coffee and settled into the lusciously warm seat

Half-way there.

…

On the far side of Barton Creek, the highway climbs upward, and the north- and southbound lanes diverge around a few modest hills of Juniper and Oak — one of the few unbulldozed vestiges of the “parkway” originally promised to Austinites as part of the development compromise in the 80s. The tree trunks were cloaked in shadows thrown across the highway from the margin of trees on other side. I did a double-take. Their canopies were glowing bright pink. 

At the crest of the hill, the towers of Oz rose up on the north side of the river, flashing in a spectacular morning light. Electric magenta glinted off their eastward faces. The rising sun blazed in the east.

“Pretty morning,” I thought to myself, recalling the smiling face of the fair and industrious Trudy as she pointed at the clouds.

She sees these things.

The hot chocolate was comforting — keeping the biting cold of that arctic blast at bay. (I mean, I think it’s 39 degrees out there!)

Anyway… I’m at the sink in the kitchen rinsing out the dark cobalt-blue mug when the fair and industrious Trudy comes back from the living room at a brisk pace.

“I have towels to dry before I sleep.”

Somewhere my grandmother is smiling.

In the depth of night, I tossed aside the many blankets. (It was cold, and we were glad for those blankets, especially the one plugged into the DC socket in the teardrop galley). I opened the door. It was a moonless night. Except for the brilliantly shining stars, it was pitch black outside.

As I sat up, I saw a creature scurry into the night. I rattled the door handle to make some noise and then put on my flip-flops, stumbling as I stood, because I had been sleeping so hard in the warmth of the blankets and the fair and industrious Trudy and faithful Izzy. I cast a glance in the direction of the creature’s retreat.

A gray shadow cowered under the the car. I couldn’t see it clearly, because I was trying to stand without falling. But it was there, watching me. I took a step forward, stumbled, and then swung my foot so as to kick some gravel in the direction of the shadow so that I might have some privacy.

A flip-flop went flying into the darkness. It landed (yes) under the back of the car — precisely where the cowering shadow had been. I walked over to retrieve my footwear still stumbling as I went. I picked found the flip-flop and then tripped. The flip-flop flipped back to the ground and flopped further under the car. 

I kneeled down. The gravel ate into my knees. Certainly by now, the creature would have fled, I thought as I groped under the car as far as I could, feeling around in the darkness for the renegade flip-flop, finding it after a moment, stumbling again as I stood up. My head having cleared, I walked off into the gloom at the edge of the woods, which had been my original intended destination.

Went I returned, the fair and industrious Trudy was snoring contentedly, oblivious to the hazards her husband had braved. As I shivered from the chill, I pulled the door shut and the many blankets back on top. Izzy came over and lay down next to me. Before my head hit the pillow, I was back asleep.

And there never was further evidence of the creature’s proximity.