Once upon a time there was a man who loved nothing more than to run, to chase. This man, fleet of foot and determined (nearly always), would often scamper down the side of a lush green tray, a black and white (and sometimes yellow, or purple, or purple and yellow) ball stuck to his feet like there were oppositely charged metals embedded in feet and sphere. These runs would inspire hope for those who saw them as well as a touch of wonder. But they were nearly always followed by an end, a failure, and then another try. Like the erasing of a blackboard filled with the wreckage of a mathematical proof.
Because at certain times, when approaching a thin, flat white line (which in fact was typically the second white line he would encounter during such runs) he would appear confused, he would become omnidirectional, wandering. He would lose his way. The black and white (and sometimes yellow, or purple, or purple and yellow) ball would run away from him, like he had scared it, or had accidentally turned the light on while it was sitting on the kitchen floor nibbling a crumb. Often it would travel in a direction that the physics of the moment should have deemed impossible. What was it that caused this?
Was it the line? Perhaps it was because the line was in the opposite direction than that in which he was running, and his brain (barely concealed behind a monumental forehead) told his body it was an obstacle. Perhaps his depth perception was off, and the flatness of the line became unflat against the green on which it was painted. Or maybe he had a weird phobia, a fear of a second line, diagnosed “deuslinaphobia”. There’s no other reasonable explanation other than an irrational fear. Because that line was skinny. And flat (we did mention it was flat, right?).
Or, maybe it was the net. See, there was a large net right behind a third line, about 54 feet away from that second line. Perhaps he had been raised the son of a fisherman, and maybe it was the sudden presence of that large net which scared him. It has been said that the bravest of seafarers can be paralyzed with fear when retrieving their tool of murder rich with their deceased prey. Such is the power of guilt in recognizing one’s ruthless ways, we imagine, that facing the net was like facing death itself.
There’s no strong end to this story, no moral to be learned. Rather, time simply passed. At some point, this fisherman’s son ran elsewhere, became a nomad, leaving one place for another, and then another all the way around the world. This man had tried. He had tried hard, in fact. He was neither loved nor hated by anyone who watched him run, such was the earnestness of his effort and sympathy for his fears. He was accepted as a man of his time, as nothing more than a fisherman’s son afraid of the net.
-ab