{"id":388,"date":"2003-02-25T11:53:55","date_gmt":"2003-02-25T19:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/?p=388"},"modified":"2023-06-24T00:48:20","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T07:48:20","slug":"undersea-ballet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/undersea-ballet\/","title":{"rendered":"Undersea Ballet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I\u2019ve been here a long time. And I don\u2019t like it here. Most of the time it\u2019s real cold and dark and lonely. It\u2019s hardly ever bright enough to get light where I am. The water\u2019s kind of dirty and down on the bottom all the light is blocked out.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t like it, though, mainly because of being lonely. I\u2019ve been down on the bottom now for months and I haven\u2019t had many friends. Fish aren\u2019t very friendly. They get afraid too easy. And they\u2019re not very smart. My owner used to have a cat and the cat would lay on me and I\u2019d like that. But fish don\u2019t lay on you and they aren\u2019t soft and warm and cute. Everything\u2019s just cold and wet and I feel all pruney and wet and soaked all the time, like it\u2019s making me all fat. It\u2019s started to make my paint peel and my rope bridle is coming apart.<\/p>\n

So I don\u2019t have any friends down here. There\u2019s a lot of garbage and broken things and furniture and, really, everything down here. People must throw things down here all the time. But there\u2019s no people to talk to, to be friends with. I miss my owner, Bobby, who was really nice and really liked me.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really remember what happened now. Everything was fine and Bobby would ride on my back and rock back and forth and yell and play cowboy and smile and was always happy. But one day I was in a truck, going somewhere, maybe moving, maybe being thrown away, but I don\u2019t think so and I hope not because Bobby loved me, and I was in the back of the truck and we were driving along next to the river and I fell off, but I couldn\u2019t hold on anyway, and I fell off onto the road, but was okay, and then the next car hit me and threw me over the side and I floated down to the bottom. And the car had broken my leg, so I guess it\u2019s good that Bobby doesn\u2019t ride on me anymore, but I miss that and the cat and wish I could have friends again. And I felt kind of floaty, but my leg\u2019s been caught on a metal stick since I hit the bottom, stuck between my legs, and I may have floated away to somewhere else if it wasn\u2019t for that being there, but that\u2019s okay, because I guess it isn\u2019t so bad except for being so lonely, but I guess things could be worse, but I\u2019m not sure because I never really went out before I fell off the truck.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Then more things fell down real slow. I was hoping it might be new friends but it was just more of the metal L\u2019s. I saw that Bobby had cards with letters on them and he used to learn letters using the cards, so I figured that maybe that\u2019s what the L\u2019s were for, for teaching letters to people, but I didn\u2019t understand why there\u2019d be so many L\u2019s or why people would just throw the L\u2019s away. And some of them didn\u2019t even look too much like L\u2019s, but they all looked a lot alike. They were all black or silver or silver & black metal and some were real straight and some were a little round and some where shaped kind of like my head and had a hole in the front like a mouth or a nose and I didn\u2019t know why an L would have holes in it, except to hang on the wall, but it wasn\u2019t that kind of hole. So more of the L\u2019s came down floating slow and it started to look like that\u2019s what most of the garbage was, metal L\u2019s everywhere, chairs, shoes, and bricks and other stuff.<\/p>\n

It was hard to see, but my eyes were used to the dark and it was real dark up there and it must have been past bed time, but there were things in the water, not fishes and the L\u2019s were coming down, so I couldn\u2019t sleep.<\/p>\n

And then a not-L came down and I wasn\u2019t really sure what it was until it got to the bottom, real slow, but it was big and funny-shaped. It wasn\u2019t shaped like me or an L, but it wasn\u2019t Bobby-shaped either. It was bigger, like a mommy- or daddy-shaped thing. And I could see that where it came down it had squirted out a stream of red going up, or at least as red as things look in the dark, but my eyes were used to it. And it didn\u2019t really look at me or anything else, it just sat there like the fish who don\u2019t stop sleeping, before they float up or get eaten, and it stared off and laid down on the ground in the L\u2019s. It had some kind of rope bridle, too, because it was wrapped around and around, but it had big bricks with holes in them on the rope and it looked like a bead necklace that Bobby\u2019s sister had and I wished my bridle had bead-rocks on it too. But the big thing just laid there and leaked more color out its head where it had a little hole that wasn\u2019t a mouth or nose hole and I thought it must be like the hole in the L\u2019s, but I didn\u2019t think either of them were to hang it on the wall. And I thought that it wasn\u2019t going to be a good friend because it wasn\u2019t very friendly and it just stared off like it was asleep and I hoped it wasn\u2019t because my bridle didn\u2019t have bead-rocks on it.<\/p>\n

But soon enough, before I could worry too much about the beads, another thing came down and it wiggled as it floated down and it came fast. And bubbles came out when it hit the bottom. I stared at it and it looked like the other thing, but it was definitely daddy-shaped and had a coat and pants and a hat that I could see and it had a bridle around its middle too, but no beads, and had one big funny foot that looked like a round brick in a pan, which is funny because it had two legs and one big foot and I have two legs on each side and one long foot for each side, but one of my back legs was broken and my foot was held down by the metal stick.<\/p>\n

I smiled and said \u2018hi\u2019 and the daddy-shaped thing blew bubbles out of its mouth and swayed from side to side and I laughed to myself. And it did a little dance for me and tried to flop from side to side, but didn\u2019t move its big foot, even though its legs would bend around and it would dance and dance and blow bubbles and its mouth hole, a real mouth hole and not a hole to hang on the wall from, it would open and close like it was pretending to be a fishy. It made me laugh.<\/p>\n

After a few minutes the dancing stopped and I guess it decided that it had impressed me or made me happy and it got real serious like the other one with the beads, but I knew that the dance meant we were friends, which was good, because I was lonely and it was cold and dark, but I had company, so now I had someone to talk to and I wouldn\u2019t be too lonely anymore.<\/p>\n

So it wasn\u2019t so lonely down on the bottom anymore and I was happy because I had a friend again and it wasn\u2019t Bobby and nobody rode on my back, not even the kitty, but I had someone to talk to, so I could make the best of the situation and I didn\u2019t feel so cold and alone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been here a long time. And I don\u2019t like it here. Most of the time it\u2019s real cold and dark and lonely. It\u2019s hardly ever bright enough to get light where I am. The water\u2019s kind of dirty and down on the bottom all the light is blocked out. I don\u2019t like it, though, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-short-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}