Intweener Shorts

A-Bridging

Not too long ago I was talking with my friend about one of the dullest things one could possibly talk about... its job. Not that any job has to be dull per se. But a lot of jobs have so much boredom in it that the amount of events happening are either created by gossip, or spread so thin over many weeks that it becomes “ just another anecdote”  of the same boring person at the birthday party you have to attend simply because your girlfriend insisted on it. 

Let’s be reasonable here... sometimes you just have to do things in a relationship you don’t want to. Be it putting something else than a pajamas on for the whole Sunday, or listen to boring people at birthday parties from your girlfriend’s friends of people you don’t know. This time it was my turn to suck it up and listen to the party’s “sad sack”, and no more tedious subject as bridges. 

Now bridges alone are awesome. They can take a huge amount of stress, stand in water for many years and not care. They don’t even notice that the western population becomes more fat every year.  But why should they? As long as you give them enough oil and give them some maintenance once in a few years they won’t complain.  

Personally I don’t really mind bridges that much. They have a purpose; they don’t whine about themselves on birthday parties and are definitely not the “sad sack” that need a stupid little birthday hat to look less miserable.  And be honest.. a bridge with a party hat can be hilarious when in the right mood. It doesn’t even have to try to be funny.

Anyhow, while I was quite in thought while the sad sack was blabbering his verbal filth towards me, peppermint breath included I noticed that he was almost at a point where normal people would start saying something interesting. Perhaps it was because I didn’t give any signal that I was listening, and in that single second he stopped talking his brains started to fire up the engine again. I was glad though, I always reward it when people start to think for a second about what they’re doing because it’s so expected of them to do the things they do. It brings a whole new dimension into a conversation. So I simply asked him if he knew why there aren’t any statues on a bridge. 

It took at least a minute before he could answer. The first ten seconds of quietness were on him, followed by me getting some more drinks to survive the rest of the evening when he’d fall into his boring pattern again. The fifty seconds were little present from me as well. 

Apparently it used to be more commonly used in the past to add nice things to a bridge, but in the last few years it was all about efficiency. I told him I would’ve loved a nice unicorn or perhaps a gargoyle at some nice points of the bridge, just to make it a little more interesting. It makes it so that people perhaps want to actually stand still on a bridge for once, instead of rushing to the end.  It may also motivate the young kids of the next generation to also think further than just a bridge in the future!  

After that he fell silent, and that was quite too bad, since I would’ve loved to discuss adding snakes to the cables that keep the bridge stable. Huge claws that seek grounding in the water’s floor and why wouldn’t you want to add wings to a bridge that brings people from places to places? 

Well he claimed a story had to have a morale or something at the end, and random remarks like an unicorn or gargoyle wouldn’t be suited for a decent grown-up conversation.  And that’s where the conversation stopped really and I ended up with two more hours of merry talking with people I found more interesting. 

Oh.. and the morale of this story? It’s quite wondrous actually: I made you read about bridges for at least a whole page.  

Based on the word : Gargoyle

Written in +- 20 minutes 

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