THE SHORT CUT

THE

SHORT

CUT

A Short Fiction

By

David A. Archer

02/15/1968

09/05/2006

It is really hard to say.

Just where it was that I began this habit.

They are everywhere…. In more of a multitude than even the vast expanse of various forms of advertisement.

In fact, I would venture that if you could stand them all “end to end” in comparison with all of the variations of advertising ploys… a person would be hard pressed to discern which to be greater; The sum total in measure of “short cuts,” or the sum total in measure of advertising space.

I wonder momentarily if Vegas has a line on that one, then realize that it probably isn’t that important to even the most desperate of bookies.

The habit itself is somewhat of a guilty pleasure, I admit. In fact, I pride myself to some degree in opting to use every short cut I happen across. Something about it just gives a lift to my day.

I could be on a perfectly good road, traveling along and knowing precisely how far to my destination…. But should that ever tempting little sign appear at the side of the road indicating a sure fire “short cut,” there just seems to be nothing more I can do beyond that sighting…except of course, go that course.

I have heard it said, that at some point a man must put away childish things.

Honestly, I just can’t begin to figure out where the heck to put them all. Where does a person put all of the short cuts? Can you imagine the storage bill? Do you first have to pack them in moth balls to insure the future visage and visitation of them around some useless family gathering will be fruitful and not filled with moth holes and the like?

When I think about it, I really don’t think that saying should apply to short cuts even as childish as they are and further even that they most assuredly originate from childish reasoning… as it just wouldn’t be fair to all of the other people using short cuts, if all of a sudden one day they went to use the short cut and it wasn’t there just because some guy thought it was time to put them all away.

I do associate using short cuts in the obsessively habitual manner which I do, to something in child hood. Mostly because quite logically, that is where the addiction began for me.

While it is that I cannot place it exactly, I do know that from youth is where the illness I bear began. And it did so in a rather innocent way I am sure… perhaps even in the effort to make it home for the evening meal so as to avoid various and unspeakable forms of trouble resulting in punishments of the sort that would shame the most hardened of war criminals…. such as eating dinner cold for breakfast, for instance.

Besides… it was always, and still is for some sick reason, much more fun to emerge at ones destination after having traversed something indescribable as per consistency and design… being the “universal” short cut.

I can trace to some degree, the beginnings of such an addiction quite simply to the efficiency I found in using them. Then further, as I have mentioned was and is the presence of excitement which I found on more than one occasion while engaging the act of using a short cut.

I can remember one in particular that lead me past a rattlesnake pit on the lip of a ledge that was hardly wider than my shoe. I’ll always remember the sidewinders being the most active of the bunch.

Another I can recall and used quite frequently, made its way along and over the railroad tracks…then through a downed area of fence… which remained like that for some years. Then of course, as with most all other short cuts, there was an alternate route a person could opt for once safely across the railroad tracks.

This alternate route was more for the use one way than it was the other… mostly because of a rather steep hill and of course the fact that it lead to an arms length near a very old graveyard…which, as anyone in their right mind could surmise, was very much the reason you used it in the morning “on the way to” somewhere… instead of in the evening near dusk (or later), on the way back.

I can remember a more recent thought regarding the very idea of the invention and have surmised that it very well may be that all short cuts in existence are somehow connected. This then further gives reason to avoid putting even one of them away. It might just damage the entirety of them all…and let’s face it, that just wouldn’t do.

I do realize that there has been some measurable damage done to various, miscellaneous properties and frivolities in the manner of wrongfully placed fencing and the like…but it is easy to see the value of the imminent domain like stature of the short cut taking precedence quite justly. They are just damn fun and handy as well.

Of course, when one appears across my back lawn I will have to do my adult duty in making sure those utilizing it know that it is only with a heaping portion of stealth that they may successfully employ that which has found its way through said stretch of property. I might even find myself with extra equipment for increasing the skill level one would need in using it as said short cut.

Maybe an air cannon with a motion sensor would do for starters?

I realize that it shouldn’t be anything so pronounced as to dissuade the use of it entirely…but most definitely should be something that gives challenge to the newly found ease in said development.

Mind you, as strange as it may seem…a person should never discount the value of even a newly established short cut. They hold great weight to many in many ways.

As I have mentioned, it is hard to tell which is the more popular in American culture when comparing advertising ploys and short cuts… but that relationship is even deeper when a person really knows that value.

For instance, it is easy to say an advertising ploy is successful to some degree when it can be seen and even heard at every turn in everyday life. But it is only when the remnants of such a ploy have found their way onto the short cuts of this nation, that any such campaign can be deemed a success beyond any reproach.

Sure, billboards along the highway or road as you drive along? No big deal… everyone does that. But to find a billboard on the side of a shortcut means nothing less than total saturation and more than likely resounding acceptance and success.

You know that advertising person really has a finger on the pulse when you happen upon such displays.

As I ponder this incredible subject, I find myself in the knowledge that there really isn’t much more to know in modern society. Beyond that is, the proper appreciation and pleasure derived from the nasty little addiction I can’t seem to resolve in the use of such short cuts.

When it is that I truly give it pause, I find myself wondering what Freud would have said about it? Could it be sexual in some mutated way? How would he have associated and described this incredible addiction?

What then of other great minds when put to such a task as analyzing even the basic popularity of such a wonderful tool? Such an unappreciated though massively popular tool unprecedented in stature and functionality. Is it of any use to ask such arbitrary questions as; Did Aristotle find comfort in his short cuts? When Alexander the Great used a short cut… did anyone complain? What did Confucius have to say about his short cuts?

Yeah, you know there are those that posture against even the idea of short cuts. Mostly out in the open when everyone is looking…but I am sure that given the situation such as when nature is calling (and using a bullhorn so to speak), you would hear no utterance of dissention pertaining to the efficiency and use of any such existing tool as a short cut from even the most righteous and upstanding of individuals.

I personally have opted to find some pleasure in addressing my shortcomings there-in... and even opting for them at times, as standard. I do so even knowing sometimes, that the short cut is full well the longer path. Patronizing myself in pretending to be in some form of denial as to the mythological aspects of such wondrous modes and means…then trapping myself in a cycle of thought which you may now begin to recognize… even knowing that sometimes I use the short cut, knowing full well it is a longer path…knowing that it is and doing so for that reason alone…while knowing somewhere inside my reasoning that it is the longer path still not seeming so along the stroll en route upon the short cut...telling myself that I know it is the longer path...but strangely realizing in the stuff of truth that it is still the short cut…even being the longer path I traverse.

Then sometimes, it is actually the shortest route to my destination.

It is more than just a moniker as I am sure that you know. Some would argue that it is even a way of life. At least in appreciation of the all encompassing nature within the very idea itself… just say it to yourself and it echoes through even your very being; short cut.

Don’t mind me… I have long since realized the facts pertaining to the simple intangible essence of the short cut, but go ahead and celebrate it a little. If you have to, begin those self realizations in celebratory romance within the privacy of where ever you feel the most comfortable and at ease.

Then watch yourself begin to realize true freedom as you soon find a bounding step in your stride and a slightly maniacal laugh of confidence thrown to the wind as if any should care, while you step within that bounding stride onto the path less traveled…or kind of less traveled, sometimes, maybe…. when addressed in open conversation, anyhow… known only as the “short cut” where ever, and how ever it manifests within reality… and duly, beneath your regal and magnificent foot each time finding newness on the age old and still un-charted, un-mapped and untamed short cut.

Alone, In A Room, With A Cat - Short Fiction

ALONE,

IN A ROOM,

WITH A CAT.





A Short Fiction

By

David A. Archer
02/15/1968








It has four walls like most any other room I have ever been in. Except I’ve no idea how it is that I came to be here, in this structure of four walls, a ceiling and floor.

When I first noticed that I was here, it was bare. A newly weds nightmare I’m sure. There wasn’t one stick of furniture. No décor… and there definitely wasn’t a cat.

It took me awhile to figure it out at first. I lived in this bare room for some time… no real way of discerning how long though as there aren’t any windows or even a door.

I thought one once, a door that is…but it didn’t lead anywhere when I opened it. It was just more bare wall behind it.

I thought a window and am pleased to find that I can think whatever I want to be beyond it to some degree. At least that lightens the thick, dull nothing that quickly becomes everything else if I let it occur.

I think I may know what you are thinking at this point; “What do you mean, thought it?” That is simple enough to explain though I don’t know why it happens to be that way. I should say that given the situation, I am kind of glad that it is.

You see, I can think things here so to speak. Will them to manifest and be here as it were, in this silly, bland room that I’ve somehow come to occupy.

I know it sounds crazy, but it isn’t.

I’ll tell you what’s crazy. That cat. Not that it is insane per say, but the fact that it is here and has been.

I certainly didn’t think it here….. and it makes its way around as if it were its own place.

I have noticed that cats are definitely of a different sort though, through the experience here with it how ever long that has been or will be. I’ve no way to tell… about the time thing that is.

I did think a clock once…but the thing doesn’t work. More that it doesn’t function in the manner a person might expect of a clock. Sometimes it’s really fast… almost a blur in its motion. And then sometimes it’s really slow. Sometimes it is just stopped… and then others, the hands of it just wobble like putty.

I thought I saw it going backwards once, but thankfully I realized that only to be my imagination as upon closer observation, the hands of it again resumed their rumba of a previous moment. Complete with musical chimes and all.

After I managed to furnish the place, which was no easy task I assure you given that it takes some concentration to actually attain a satisfactory result in said manifestations. Especially given that I can’t physically move anything around. I have to re-think it again if I want something in a different place.

Besides being a tiresome task, it doesn’t seem to please the cat much either, so I refrain from it as much as possible. Even though I’ve no idea how or why it is here. The cat, that is.

As I was saying, I’ve noticed that cats are a particular breed. More so than I had ever really noticed in all of my experience with them. Not that I have had extensive experience with felines, but I have had a few.. mostly in my youth which met ill fates under cars or froze to death in their supposed independence.

Maybe that’s why I’m so removed from this one… and so mystified at it’s presence. Those cats I had of my own turned out to be so selfish that they ruined a considerable part of my life with their demise, bringing on loads of over emphasized sorrow that only a child can display in those instances when grappling with the concept of death.

THEY ran across the street when the car was coming. Even through much of my own pronounced protest at the action. THEY refused to come home when it got dark and cold. THEY chose to end our relationships in obviously horrific ways.

Yeah, I think that’s what it is. Why I still refrain from an intimacy with this particular kitty.

I’ve watched it though. Let’s face it, there isn’t much else to do here and like I said, I’ve noticed a depth in particularity within the species that I’ve never really noticed before. Of course, repeated games of “stuff the cat in a pillow case” doesn’t allow for much observation time. Especially given that a child isn’t much concerned with observation time anyhow. “Stuff the cat in a pillow case” is just much more alluring.

I know what some of you are thinking… that the dead cats were just trying to make a “get away” so to speak, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Besides, they all liked to play that game… and “hide the cat in the hamper, as well.” That one usually took place just before the afternoon nap. Where of course, the cat would gladly join in, purring its way… our way rather, into a much protested but soon deeply embraced, nap.

This one wasn’t much different. Several times I caught it trying to get warm and cozy as I dozed, most brazenly after ignoring my every nuance pertaining to co-habitation. As if it seemed, I were nothing more than a piece of the furniture, which I might add, I thought into this space.

Yes, the observation of it is one of my only activities if it could be called an activity. I’ve thought plenty of books… or at least attempted to think them. But, as I’ve found they seem to manifest here according to ones level of recollection.

I thought Moby Dick here once…. But Homer got away in the end, after landing a guppy from the local swimming pool and then trading it in for some hookers and an ’82 Trans Am. I do admit that the “get away” was rather exciting and there were allot of pictures too, but needless to say I soon was no longer in the way of thinking other people’s great novels into my small abode here, with that cat.

I thought “War and Peace” once, but ended up with a condensed version of the transcripts from all of the “Family Feuds.” So, needless to say, as I stated before… the want of thinking novels soon waned.

Don’t get me wrong here…. The cover was a beautiful, leather bound hard back, as was the “Moby Dick,” it’s just that the content had manifested somewhat differently than were the actual works. I use them both now to press the leaves and blossoms that I manage to manifest now and then.

Soon I found great success though, in the reading material area. I found it in the genre of good, old fashioned comic books. It seems that even in the random transitional phase between what I can recall and what actually appears makes no difference in regard to comic books. It still turns out to be a great story every time. No matter what oddities transpire in reference to known characters.

I somehow even managed a transsexual “Duper Dog” at one point. But that was only until “he” met with “Pixie The Poodle” and quickly decided that being a “boy dog super hero” wouldn’t be all that bad. I do admit, “Pixie The Poodle” was somewhat of a stunner… but as one might expect, after “Duper Dog” reversed his surgery… “Pixie” turned out to be his arch enemy in disguise.

Man was he steamed!

Yeah, I know… you are going to start wondering why I don’t just dream up some companionship?

That’s another one that just doesn’t happen.

I’ve attempted it. I’ve tried to think up floosies and hookers and models…. You know, the typical guy stuff. I’ve even attempted a few average broads… busty, well built broads. But as you might guess, no such luck. It just doesn’t happen for some reason.

I have however, managed a few blow up dolls in their stead. Not that I was attempting to get blow up dolls…but that’s just what kind of showed up.

Anyhow, what I was saying about the cat…. It’s as if they exist somewhere else entirely. Except of course for their physical bodies.

It isn’t like they are dumb. It isn’t like they aren’t. It’s just that they don’t seem to be all together in the same place as everything else… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing I might add. In fact, a person could see after being here for some time, where it may be something to be envied in some degree.

She sits there sometimes, just sitting. You can tell her mind is somewhere and thoughts are transpiring… but it isn’t something you could understand. It isn’t even something you could begin to fathom judging from the gaze that is always there in those moments.

The motion and way in which she moves… while still beyond anything I could begin to understand.

It’s thought, but it isn’t thinking. It isn’t thinking that is, in the way that you and I do… and it’s obvious. Poignant, seemingly flawless in flow, and obvious in the most subtle way.

The cat can do it too, I think. Think things that is. It must because I know for a fact that I’ve not thought any rats here… and definitely not any dead rats. But there they are now and then. Scurrying about or laying lifeless on the floor… or even in some contorted position where she left it to follow one of those trains in thought.

I guess I should mention the birds, too. It was all I could do for some time to keep the myself from looking like a statue in a park somewhere. I would wake up from my slumber, and there she would be gazing at the fluttering birds. Every one of them trying desperately not to land on anything, as everything they could land on was in clear striking distance of her anticipatory stance.

At first I thought it was rather neat, all of the chirping and fluttering…. But then as I’ve mentioned came the need to think in allot of newspaper.

I got a kick out of it once… when she actually thought up a bird in a cage so I kept it around, and soon found it to be enough to fill her apparent quota of attention to birds.

What I realized from all of this, is that the cat must have had other experiences elsewhere as well. How else would a cat know about birds and rats?

How then again, did this cat get here with me?

As much as I thought and remembered and considered it, I just could not seem to recall this cat.

It did serve a purpose though as it never seemed to take the same path around the place… and it filled the space of boredom where I could have even believed the Earth to be the center of the Universe with nothing else around to consider.

Not that I think the Earth is the center of the Universe. Only that with nothing else around, it was just as good of a motive for thought as anything else.

It isn’t as though I spent my life with a cell phone in my hand while insisting that space travel was a hoax. All I’m trying to say is that it isn’t such a bad thing to have a cat around to break the monotony…. Even if I don’t know how it got here.

I did think the Earth as the center of the Universe at one point though, just for something to look at through the window.

It wasn’t hard to see how incorrect such directions of thought were…but then again, this was no ordinary window. I could scroll it.. more the contents, and magnify it, I could even simply set it into a motion similar to a moving picture, but with far more detail.

The Earth being the center of the Universe thing? That couldn’t have been more off base from what I can tell.

But then again, I’m stuck in a room with a cat I never even thought here.

OUT ONLY IN - Short fiction

OUT

ONLY

IN

A Short Fiction

By

David A. Archer
02/15/1968




Copyright©6/26/2006

I figured it out, you know. Some time ago I think, but only happened on the opportunity to explore it in a real sense, recently. This, even after some years of trying to no avail as a child, then some years of no longer even giving it a thought.

As I strolled along some time ago now, perhaps a year as it is seen, it finally dawned on me as to why- when a child - I never quite managed to dig my way “clean through to China” in the many endeavors of such activities I began….but obviously never finished.

It just isn’t possible! And those that still claim it is, simply haven’t made certain and very basic realizations that I seem to have, and will seek to divulge here in.

You see, I’ve even discovered why it just isn’t possible. No, it isn’t because it is too far. It isn’t because there is supposedly some blob of molten stuff between the two prospective points, somewhere in the middle. It isn’t because there aren’t any shovels or other instruments big enough to do the job or children (and other types of people) willing to try.

Quite simply put, it is very much because the “middle” isn’t where everyone seems to think it is.

I walked along some time ago as this finally came to mind in crystal clear sense, and then began the chore of seeking out some particulars for myself. This just in the effort to better seat the radical change I had discovered, within my own understanding.

Without challenging you to understand all of the complicated scientific like stuff that I have waded through in this task, I will again only state the obvious; “Out” is really only “In” so to speak.

As it is in modern understanding, many now believe that our “planet” revolves around a center point we call the “sun”…. and beyond that are many vast spaces and configurations of other articles in motion, which comprise what we call our “universe.”

This is a great fallacy and a really mean trick to play on all of the kids in the world still trying to dig their way to China.

I count myself no longer a fool in those numbers of people still not knowing that they were actually digging away from anything we as humans even can imagine…. Especially away from that which we have examined and viewed.

Quite factually, I have discovered that China isn’t “under” us, or “through the planet” on the other side of us. It is very much only kind of across from us so to speak. “Across” a not so vast expanse of area which most of us know as “space.”

You see…. “up,” that is to say, “Out” as we see it, is really only “in.” And it is only “in” until you are half way “across.” Then it becomes “down” again.

I have discovered some things that I really feel would be more trouble than it would be worth to bring to light within the scientific communities, mostly because I do not want to deal with small minded arguments and egocentric posturing simply for the recognition, so I do hope that you will keep this all to yourself to some degree.

Firstly I should explain that our complicated explanations for and of “gravity” are really just mumbo jumbo invented to make some people look important. It is very much as it seems topically as can be demonstrated in spinning any common item that can be spun to demonstrate such. For instance, if you use a regular old balloon… you blow it up and then look at it. You can then easily see what it is that I am talking about.

Our planet isn’t round… at least not in the way that we all think. It doesn’t travel around a central point in what we think is space. And, sadly enough as it were, it isn’t the center of the universe as was once thought, either.

It is round in a way like the balloon you could be looking at right now…. And even round like any other inflatable sports ball. The difference being is understanding and perspective pertaining to the configuration of the “round” part and how exactly it actually figures into the bigger picture, as it were.

If you are looking at a balloon or sports ball, simply stop imagining that if it were a “planet,” that we somehow manage to keep ourselves stuck to the outside of it while it spins. Simply make the realization that we exist, as does all else within our knowledge, on the inside of the balloon or sports ball.

Yes, the “Earth” is round, but not in the “walking on the outside of it way.” It is round in the “walking on the inside of it way.”

Everything else that we know of as “space” and the like, is simply incredibly small, and it is limited in distance though far enough that we can’t see to the other side of the expanse between where you are and the other side of the “planet.”

You may immediately ask many of what you think are sound physical and pertinent questions, one of which being that such would not be possible because things like the sun and moon are always the same size and move through the sky. How could they do so while being contained within… up, as it were, from us, in a contained area?

Well that is an easy one….. would be my response. The answer is simple. They don’t move in any way, and neither does anything else in “space” with such relations. Sure, there’s some stuff still bouncing around in there, but that is not of much import really. It is just important to know that none of what we think are large planets and stuff…. Aren’t really that big and they aren’t moving.

They are quite small…. Some even microscopic in fact, and the round thing that we walk on the inside of, is the reason they all look like they move when we look “up,” or “in” rather, at them.

I found this out while doing an experiment with a helium balloon which I attached a message to. I did this experiment after I started to realize the actual configuration of the space things and stuff.

I let the balloon fly “up” and toward and through what I hoped would be its path to the other side of the inside part of the round thing that we walk on the inside part of.

To make a long story short, I was correct in most everything I had realized about the mean joke played on kids thinking they are going to dig to China. The helium balloon went all of the way in and through to the other side.

What I found really interesting about this, was that I found there is a compression value in such “space travel.” That is the reason, though I’m no scientist, that I believe all of the other space type of things “out” there are so small. It is actually “in.” It is “in” in ways that are more than just “inward” in direction pertaining to “in.” Then of course, it is “out” in just as many ways pertaining to “out,” but only so far until you again find yourself on the “walking on the inside part of the round thing”…. Which as you know is called the ground.

I found further proof of these findings beyond the helium balloon experiment when I borrowed a really powerful telescope and began to snoop around some on my own.

The first thing I noticed was that the small things in the sky we call stars, are really pretty small and only look bigger in a telescope because no one ever looks at them next to anything they can compare them to.

I decided I was going to be the guy that did that. The guy that made the effort to look at them next to something else. So I did.

One night, on a very clear night and at a place I will not disclose. I set up the telescope and began my experiments.

I looked through the telescope and situated it on a “star.”

I then produced a very long stick with a glow in the dark antenna ball on the end of it, and placed it out in front of the telescope directly next to the supposedly distant star.

I found that I was correct when I extended the glow in the dark antenna ball. It appeared to be the very same size that it had before I extended the long stick, but now it was very near the same “distance” as was the “star.”

I know this because I looked in a book and then measured the stick to be the same length as was the published distance of the star, supposedly “away” from “Earth.” The fact is, measurement changes…more that it converts “shrinki-ness” and “distance” when in reference to “outer space” and then is documented as a given “distance.”

The “length” of measure isn’t necessarily the actual “distance” to the very small physical object that we see, being a “star” for instance. BUT, the measurement given compensates with the shrinking effect from here to there… so as the stick shrinks, it will shrink just right to be equal to the place where the very small “star” is.

In this finding I was especially pleased and further was glad that I had come prepared to find what I had suspected to be a truth. I then replaced the glow in the dark antenna ball with several large marshmallows, and commenced to enjoy several helpings of star roasted smores and crispy burnt marshmallows. The trick is in rotating the marshmallow so as to evenly brown it…especially when using a “distant” star because they are so small. It takes longer than next to a roaring campfire or even your stove. So just keep that in mind before you go trying it yourself.

I did another balloon experiment, but this time I watched it all the way through as far as I could, and again witnessed more which substantiated my discoveries thus far. It actually had to begin to “squish” through at one point. It, itself had to begin to get smaller as it squished and made that annoying squeaky balloon sound, then re-emerging within view as it began its “descent.”

Further in my investigations, I found myself enthralled with the idea of things such as the “North Pole” and then of course the “South Pole.”

“How could they fit in with all of these new realizations?” I thought to myself quite a bit.

I then made it a point to investigate and found that they are actually connected, but because of that compression aspect, I couldn’t personally make the journey all of the way through at first, but then I devised a contraption which I actually fitted to the “pole.”

This contraption acted to stabilize the atmospheric pressure while it “climbed” the pole in one direction and then descended in the other. Both in a very controlled and smooth fashion.

I call it the People, Space Pole Slider Thing and must admit that it has thus far performed rather efficiently. It is an aspect I would greatly appreciate some level of secrecy about so as to avoid heavy corporate combat with established amusement park companies. I can just see where they would love to exploit such for their own personal gain, and to tell you the truth, I don’t have the legal team with which to fend off such bullies…. And further I can see where allowing such a conversion to amusement park status, might be an ethical violation of universal proportions. Besides, before you knew it people would be lined up half way around the inside of the “walking on part of the round thing” we think is a “planet,” just to squirt over to the other side of the pole.

The more I think back on it, the more I am glad that I stopped digging for China when I did. Really, we can’t begin to imagine what would have happened if I managed to actually break through the shell of the outside part of the round thing we exist within. I might have got sucked out into something that might as well be anyone’s guess.

Further, I am now finding some harbored feelings toward my parents that I never knew existed before I made these realizations.

Let’s be factual about this.

What were they thinking in not only letting me try to dig my way to China, and thusly endangering me with the remote chance that I would be sucked out into something no one knows about, but even encouraging it?

Maybe I could file some sort of reckless endangerment suit? Maybe even some sort of emotional abuse type of thing within the knowledge of what I have recently discovered about their level of negligence? Malice, even?

It goes even beyond negligence!

They actually encouraged me in my childhood endeavors! What this means in the light of these new findings which I have discovered personally, is that they might have very well wanted me to dig so far that I would at least not come back, if it is that I managed not to get sucked out into whatever it is that is actually on the outside part of the inside part of where we exist.

You have to admit, that is just plain mean. Then, they never let me in on the fact that it isn’t possible for a child to dig all of the way to China.

I had to figure it out for myself some years after it was no longer of any interest, anyway.

I am so glad that I finally just lost interest in such play time activity.

Man! Think about that! My play time activities were actually partially designed for the possibility of my getting ejected off of the outside part of whatever is the outside part of the spinning round thing we all live in. It kind of makes me want to build a safe room or something, just for a sense of security to help me through those moments when thoughts about such designs make me feel far too alone and fragile.

How is it that society can be so reckless with its children?

How is it that society can allow such malicious intent as in arming a child with a shovel and actually encouraging such dangerous activity?

As an adult, I personally don’t like even the remote chance that some anonymous child somewhere might just compromise the safety of our atmosphere. Even though it is somewhat polluted and dangerous of itself these days.

The fact is, even that polluted atmosphere could be jeopardized in such a breach.

What if everything else got sucked out, too?

Is that risk worth the wicked little pleasurable thoughts going through a parents mind as they stand in the kitchen watching from a distance and quietly chanting; “DIG DIG DIG DIG?” Pumping their fists slowly and hoping secretly behind their caring façade that a huge puff of dust will rise, and a huge sucking sound will fill the general vicinity?

After making these discoveries, I really don’t think such risk is worth those small, yet probably delectable pleasures. This even in the face of not yet a parent.

I do admit that such risks might be tempting, simply in a sort of “turnabout” manner. And particularly given the near tonnage of dirt I moved for no reason as a child.

I recant that. Being that I had a pretty good reason, it was simply a reason which was not entirely what I thought it was.

So in that it is that I will surmise this initial effort to disclose some of my recent findings in offering some quaint and uncomplicated advice;

If it’s China that you are aiming to get to?

You’re better off on the slow boat by any means.

That is even and especially if you plan on digging your way there regardless of what you, your parents or even your very best friend seem to think momentarily.

Of course, you could always squeak through in a large helium balloon I suppose. As long as you don’t mind talking in that incredibly annoying voice pitch when you get there.