Intweener Shorts

Flower Power

It's tricky to start any story without a proper start. Usually there's an event that triggers the start of things, which then escalated into something interesting and eventually ends up as a part of one's past. 

But if there are no witnesses to that specific event, the impact could be lower than usual. It's like one of those funny moments in life where everything goes perfectly and according to plan. Catching a train right on time, or when you're a minute late so was the train. No one spots it and all you think in hindsight is.. " That was lucky!" , perhaps you tell about it at dinner, and that's it. 

Life is only as interesting as you can make it yourself. I knew a person who loved to exaggerate.  But his way was pretty special to me. Some who love to exaggerate do it for attention, or to compensate for their flaws. Often there were times that people claimed they were smarter or faster than him. And all he did was smile and just walk away from them. He knew he was smarter and faster, and there was nothing they could do about it. 

But he also loved to exaggerate at a very different level. Mostly it was entertaining, and he was often the most talked about person at parties and whenever he felt like it he was the center of attention. 

Before he became that person he was generally shy and I recall the first time his " gift"  emerged.  

We were eating soup somewhere in the afternoon, and his parents always used those pasta things that could be used to make words in the soup. They had a scrabble board next to it to see how many points the words they made were worth.  It was usually a fun game and they had a monthly ritual with it. But on that particular afternoon my friend the exaggerater, even though he wasn't known for it back then, so let's call him by his first name now shall we? It's Tim. 

A few minutes into our soup he suddenly froze and looked into his bowl. He looked at me with a certain fright in his eyes. 

" It sais help me"  , Tim said. A nasty silence fell. I'm pretty sure i didn't even see his spoon touch any of the pasta letters yet, and apparently so did his parents. 

He shook his head and started to cause a small whirlpool inside his bowl with his spoon. After half a minute the force that caused the whirlpool subsided  and I saw Tim's face turn even paler than before. 

" Please, Help me", Tim whispered. I looked into the bowl this time and i read the exact same thing.   Statistically this was impossible, but it happened anyway. It was only a few weeks after that moment that he said it was staged.. though he never said how. 

But after that moment he started to tell stories. Stories that would perhaps be by sheer luck, or simply because it happened to him. But it always entertained the people around him and they didn't even care about the outcome. There was one story that always stuck with me more than any of him, though I'd love to tell you about all of them of course. 

The duck pond was by far the most interesting place to go when it was sunny, warm and spring. I used to lay there and gazing at the creatures that made their way over the small pondss that were placed very cousily next to a few awesome flowerbeds. Tim couldn't tell if the flowers had forced the ponds the way they were now and kindly asked me to stop wondering such insane things. So i did. 

I went for a walk to subside my odd ways of thinking and when I came back about fifteen minutes later Tim was sitting straight up, gazing at the pond. I looked around to see if anything had happened, but everyone else just moved along. But that didn't explain the paleness of Tim's face. 

He pointed at a rubber duck that was gliding over the tiny waves and he started talking. 

"I threw this rubber into the pond just after you left, and I enjoyed how it was making it's way through the other ducks over there to the right. Two ducks came at him and made their way to my little rubber duck. They circled a few times over it and apparently accepted it as one of it's kind. The two ducks were parents apparently because the younger ducks, all five of them followed closely afterward. The father duck quacked a few times toward it's children and they formed a line behind him. And they accepted the rubber duck into the family!" , Tim said amazed. 

I couldn't believe what i was hearing. This was preposterous right? But he continued!

" They were making their way to the other side of the pond, and my rubber duck couldn't keep up of course. He was the third in the group, and the father kept coming back to give him a little push. A few moments later the rubber duck was laying still again, and the father came back again and snapped his neck! Then he just followed on and there was a lot of quacking from the young. They were scared shitless! And here you see now, the beheaded rubber duck.." 

Even now I'm not sure I believed him, but the letters in his soup always made a very strong appeal. Every year around the same time I return to the park with the duck ponds, because Tim told me he would honor the moment that this miraculous thing happened. And every year, I watch the pond and see a different coloured rubber duck...

I never doubted Tim again.

Based on the word : Flowerpower

Written in : +- 20 minutes

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