On the Chancellor's Public Statement

     Mike and I were talking on the phone about the Chancellor’s public statement. We disagreed. Or we were trying out different positions on the issue the way friends do.

     I picked two chunks of watermelon out of a bowl. I thought I’d be able to eat the melon and still have a significant conversation with Mike. Mike was questioning the foundation of the Chancellor's reasoning, just as one melon chunk slipped loose and started bobbling in my hand. Like a fish is the best way I can describe how it flopped and leaped. Mike reviewed some numbers, and I felt confident I would regain control. I’ve always had good hand-eye. But, uncharacteristically, when I tried to snare the one loose chunk, I also lost the other and after a suspended animation moment of noooooo, I dropped them both on the floor.

     “Damn,” I said. 

     “What?” said Mike.

     “Nothing,” I said, and bent and picked up the chunks, which had come to rest by the dog dish. Mike began deconstructing the Chancellor's conclusions, as I popped one melon chunk into my mouth and chewed twice. It was then that I realized I’d ingested a long coarse hair that was starting to make me gag.

     “I gaa go,” I said and hung up just as Mike was arriving at a scathing critique of the Chancellor’s public statement. I spat in the sink but the hair had pretty fully colonized my mouth. Concerned, I thrust my hand in and pinched a short length of the hair between my thumb and forefinger. It had noosed itself around both my tongue and molar before stretching back toward my tonsils. This seemed an unusually high level of attainment for a twice-chewed loose hair and I suddenly experienced a moment of alien fear, as if the hair might be more of a worm.

    As I disentangled it, the hair lunged for the back of my throat, but my fingers were strong in the moment of pressure and ultimately succeeded in extracting it. As after minor surgery, I felt rattled but newly connected to mortality and improved, overall.  I took a deep breath and ran the hair—still fighting, I swear—down the drain.

     Then Mike called back. He had suddenly reconsidered and quickly developed a discerning justification of the Chancellor’s public statement. I called him a flip-flopper but he didn't laugh. He strongly encouraged me to side with his defense. I looked up from the drain trap and saw through the slats of the venetian blinds covering the window above my sink a white plumbing van parked across the street. Friendly Plumbing in black block letters. A large satellite rotated slowly on its roof, from which extended a long antennae that wobbled and drooped toward my house.