It’s kinda like this
Imagine a hamster
He spends all day in a converted fish aquarium
He’s is left alone
Except for two five minute periods a day
When some giant says a few meaningless words
Does a few chores
And replaces the water and food pellets
The rest of the day
He’s on his own
Now there’s only one interesting thing in his cage
The running wheel
Not surprisingly, the hamster starts to run
He runs because he likes to run
He runs because there’s nothing else to do
He keeps running
Even when he needs to poop
He runs
It doesn’t matter
The poop falls right through the wheel
And lands on the floor
The hamster keeps running
He poops again
And keeps running
Running, running poop running poop
After a while
He looks down
He thinks
“Hey, that’s kind of interesting
When the poop falls through the wheel
It looks different than regular poop
It’s in an odd pattern
I wonder if I can do this
On purpose”
For the rest of the day
The hamster runs
And poops
With a purpose
Sometimes he moves to one side of the wheel
Sometimes to the other
He tries it while running extra fast
He tries it while walking
The pattern gets more and more interesting
When he has to eat and drink
He’s really careful getting down from the wheel
He doesn’t want to disturb the pattern
Just as the sun goes down
The giant returns
He grunts in human speech
“Gee, you sure made a mess today!”
He takes the paper from the bottom of the cage
And rolls it up carefully
He puts down new paper
And gives the hamster
Water and pellets
The giant leaves
The hamster lies exhausted
He looks at the clean paper
He looks at the food and water
And he finally understands
“He gave me food and water for my pretty pattern
He put down more paper for a new pattern
I must be an artist!
"I’m underpaid”
*An excerpt from Salt for the Journey: Humor, Tragedy, and Acts of Bravery, a collection of short stories and poems by Will Wright. It is available from Smashwords.com