Matchstick Bridges - A Review

Ducking under a tree and stepping between the masked hordes, I finally have an answer to that question that always plagued me. How did city kids go trick-or-treating?

As an adult needing groceries and to run some errands. I did not like the answer.

I walked through the somehow increasingly busy streets and laughed at the somehow increasingly passive aggressive signs taped to storefronts that read “no more candy, stop asking” and “you suckers took all our suckers,” and it helped me remember the true rhythm of a city’s streets. I debated in my head if the ebb and flow was manufactured or natural. Where the throngs of interweaving people and cars developed by that big scary thing called infrastructure? Or nurtured holistically by that dying thing, nature.

It’s probably a mix of both.

I’m young, but not that young. So I don’t apply cosmic meaning to my urge to jaywalk the one-way streets that evolved or were designed to encourage ease of access. Instead, I just don’t do it. There are kids around, and habits are infectious, like the plague of sore throats and a rather nasty cough spreading through the Teacher Work Room.

I suppose, that’s where most things start, so it only makes sense that the flu got its first place there too.

Side question: do you think the microbes in your gut can get TOO strong? Like. I’ve been eating yogurt for breakfast, and the only “healthy” thing the Teacher “free fridge” is stocked with is yogurt too. So, quite often, I eat yogurt for breakfast and yogurt as like… a mid-morning snack.

That’s a lot of probiotics. And, for the record, I’m pro-biotica in general, so long as they don’t let me know they’re slowly sapping me of my free will, I’m just asking because I feel bad for contributing to a system in which the bad bacteria is perpetually prosecuted, while new “good” biotica is introduced. It just doesn’t seem right.

I feel bad for the E. Coli, and the C. Diff, you know? It’s just looking for somewhere to live, and here I am, keeping it safe and warm and perpetually covered in a sludgy mix of half digested veggies and corn-based-products, and then boom, I kick it out, right when it’s getting to find its home.

What kind of digestive system freely allows that?

Anyway. Back to the matter at hand. I’m young, but I’m not that young. So, when I see a bridge made of matchsticks, I don’t burn it. Sure, I mix metaphors like a DJ without a flint for scratch, but I try to always apologize afterwards (sorry). I don't cross the bridge either. I sketch it, and take notes on how to hold it again, only better.

I don't mean to suggest I can effectively improve everything I reiterate, I can only hope to learn from the bridge on the precipice of becoming a pyre. A memory. A metaphor.

But there's nothing less natural than a bridge. It's effectively a big middle finger to nature's rule, extending from the palms of banks and cliffs and making me sick from all the blue.

So when I learn, and when I grow, I'm leaving behind pieces of that dying thing, I can only hope it composts and completes the cycle. On the chance it doesn't, at least rubber trees smell good when burnt.

But I guess, that's just me mixing metaphors some more.

And now I'm only kind of sorry.

Thanks for reading!!! Have a great weekend.