An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 53, February 22, 2012
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One day as a small boy I was snorkeling in clear, warm waters off the coast of Baja California, Mexico. I saw a small fish swim by, and it had little fear of me compared to the other fish. It wasn’t very attractive, it had a funny face, and bumps all over it. It was a brown, turd color, and it was not sleek and shapely like other fish. When I swam closer to it, it slowly swam away from me, about the same speed that I swam after it, not very worried about me at all. Since I had fins on, I stepped up the pace, and I tried to grab it by the tail. Suddenly, the weird fish spun around and faced me, and POOF!, it puffed up and became 5 times its size, and since I was so shocked, it became 5 times uglier. Even though I was a human, albeit a small one, I was still king of the world (or so my society taught me), nevertheless, I set a world record for how fast a small boy could escape from a fat, bloated, ugly fish. It feels like that fish is still laughing at me. When I recovered some measure of courage, I went behind a rock ledge and watched it. In a couple of minutes, the funny thing simply deflated, and went on about its business. That day its business seemed to be frightening little tourists. Since I had no idea what it was, I called it the “pride” fish. It acted like me when I got in a situation where I was nervous or attacked, and with its formidable pride it became more powerful and menacing than it really was.
When I learned from the adults on the beach that I told my inflating, Pride fish story to, that it was called a Puffer fish, I became very prideful, and I puffed up to defend myself. Everyone was laughing at me since I was so ignorant, and they thought my story was hilarious, and I of course very foolish. I misunderstood that they thought the whole thing was cute. I puffed up just like my fish, and I menaced them with my spear that I was too afraid to use on fish. “Maybe I should spear you!, you shouldn’t laugh at me!” In truth, since I had my hand through the stretched rubber tubing to fire the spear, the adults became as scared of my threats with the spear as I was of the puffer fish. When the adults stood up, actually upset at having a loaded fishing spear pointed at them, I ran back into the water. I now felt safer with the sharks and eels and puffer fish than with human adults who laughed at me.
They say that there is good pride, and bad pride, and false pride. I say that there is poof, and there is more poof, and there is even more poof. When a person is prideful, they are poofed, and how nice it is for me to be poof-ful that my lawn looks so great, or poof-ful that my boy is the one that made the touchdown, or poof-ful that I look good today or have accomplished my dream. Nevertheless, when we are feeling pride, we are poofing. Pride is the way that we exhibit self respect and self esteem, and we poof, we think, in an appropriate degree. When we poof too much of our self respect and self esteem, we over-poof, and we show conceit and arrogance. I learned from the poofing of the Puffer fish, and my successful menacing of adults far larger than me who offended me, that pride and poofing are defensive mechanisms.
I’ve been watching how Puffer fish behavior works in our world, and I have come to the conclusion that we humans are more Puffer fish than any Puffer fish. In humans, poofing is THE survival and prosper mechanism. I think that Puffer fish design and build skyscrapers, and Puffer fish design and drive Ferrari race cars, and Puffer fish write constitutions and run for president. My ugly friend the real Puffer fish just cruises around looking for food and a mate, and only poofs to defend itself. We humans are living, breathing, minute by minute, poofers. Where would we all be if we didn’t or couldn’t poof? Our very self respect and self esteem, or our lack of it, is exhibited in pure poof.
I would imagine that an enlightened, mystic, sage, guru, son of God type, to be the one human with the least poof of all of us poofers. Yet I bet that when I misunderstand his laugh at me for my ignorance of Puffer fish to be attacking instead of kind, and when I chase him all over his cave, enraged with my spear, he is still going to poof in one way or another. How funny that I figured out as a boy that our very survival as a species, and our ascent to the top of the food chain, was and is fueled by our superior ability to poof. How funny that all the success and comfort we enjoy today, all the progress and technology, all the great human achievements in all areas of life, were and are all fueled by poof. How funny that all arguments, all fights, all wars, all lunacies right up to all those poofy nuclear ICBM’s ready to poof us all for the last time, are all poof, poof, poof. How funny that our poofing can and will return us to poofy fallout dust. We are a poofy bunch of humans.
I wish I could have told Mr Puffer fish that I was just a kid, and terrified of all the creepy things floating all over the place in the ocean. I wish I could have him that I only carried the spear so that I could defend myself in case Jaws came by to eat me, and that when I wanted to touch him, I didn’t even have the rubber cord stretched to fire. I guess he poofed out of lack of self respect and self esteem, and he felt insecure and needed to cover up his vulnerability with his poofness. I forgive him every time I act the same way. My feelings got hurt by people laughing at me and I did stretch the cord and point it at some really scary, big people, who amazingly enough became scared of me. From that day on, all the adults in the campground warned each other not to laugh at me, since I got all “poofed” out of shape when they did, and then they would run away laughing. It’s a good thing that the president didn’t entrust me with his red nuke button on those days, because that really poofed me.
I felt sorry for My Puffer fish that day. I didn’t mean to scare him, and he looked kind of silly floating there all poofed up. I felt sorry for me too, since I had to stay in the water for hours where Jaws was waiting for me, since the angry adults were waiting for me on the beach. I had to wait for them to start their camp fire, and drink a lot of beer, and get all poofed up with each other to forget about me. The next day they took my spear away, and that was the end of snorkeling for me. There is no way I’m going to face all the scary things in the sea if I can’t poof up too. So much for being king of the world.
Think about Mr Puffer fish the next time you get all poofed up, like I do every 5 minutes. “Am I exhibiting healthy and cooperative poof respect and poof esteem? Is this my poof survival and poof ambition? Am I just hiding that I’m poof afraid and poof hurt and poof insecure? Is my poofness in my and everyone else’s best interest? Or am I being poof conceited and poof arrogant and poof insane just out of defensive poofness?”
I’m really glad that I had the poofness to escape and avoid Jaws that day, and all the moray eels and sea snakes, and a zillion other things down there in the ocean that little boys fear. I’m also glad that my hand didn’t slip on the shaft of my spear and hurt or kill some innocent adult camper who thought I was cute. That would have been an unfortunate day for poofness. There have been many, many very good poofy days in the history of humanity. There have been many, many tragic days in the history of humanity as a result of poof. May I and we all have the grace of my friend Mr. Poofy fish.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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