Dail felt
like he was in a rut; mentally and creatively. Not necessarily physically,
though he was surrounded by steep sides which would require a not
inconsiderable amount of effort to navigate his way out of. The water wasn't
exactly warm and his clothes were dirty. And then there was the duck. It had
been staring at him for some time now, bobbing its head up and down slowly
drifting around. It was the way that it didn't seem to blink that disconcerted
Dail the most. Most things with eyes blinked; he was fairly sure of this and
blinked a few times himself just to check. But every time his eyes opened and
closed, the duck was still there. It was on his leg now, and the laws of
laziness forbade him to pick it up and move it, but a vague shake of the leg
dislodged the awkward poultry in question, and it drifted away with the kind of
languidity (a word that, by all accounts, should exist, though Dail was fairly
sure it didn't) that only a duck that doesn't blink can satisfactorily achieve.
A
repeating wooden knocking sound snapped him uncomfortably back to reality, as
did someone shouting, "Are you done in there yet?". The voice was
familiar... 'Ah yes, Dad', he deduced. Dail must have been in the bath for at
least and hour and a half now, and his dad only liked using the toilet that was
in the bathroom, for some undisclosed reason that had always slightly unnerved
the family.
"Be
out in a minute." Dail hollered back. The bathroom doesn't reverberate as
much since his mum and dad had redecorated; and Dail could have sworn they
didn't have a rubber duck last time he was there.
"Dad,
is that your duck in there?" he asked once he'd dried and clothed himself
and Dad had made use of the facilities.
"Of
course it is. Do you think its your mothers?"
"Good
point. Is it to replace your desire to walk a penguin down the street whilst
wearing a top-hat and tails?"
"Shut
up. Food's getting cold."
"'Tis
good to be back" Dail grinned to himself as he plodded down the familiarly
creaky stairs, skipping the last few and pulling on the banister to spin him
round 180 degrees and into the kitchen, as per tradition.
"I
think I'm turning into a potato. I've just eaten so many of them today."
Dail, his
brother Tad, sister Shim and Dad were en route to Heathrow to pick up their
respective mother and wife as she returned from visiting family in Israel. Tad
had just unwittingly just unleashed a surreal yet worryingly serious
conversation on the occupants of the car.
"Well, it would be a good
move. Just think of the potential you'd have. So much more than you have at the
moment."
"So do you think I
should be a potato?"
"Of course. You could be so
much more. As a human, you're only ever going to be a human. But as a
potato...you could be anything! Chips, crisps..."
"You could be mashed up and
put on a Sheppard's pie, cut up and roasted, baked and covered in tuna and
beans..."
"I
still think I'd have more potential as a human."
"Nonsense!
You could wreak havoc in Ireland just by not being there!"
"But
that's loads of potatoes. I'd only be one."
"Well
you're still only one human."
"What's
going on?"
"We're
convincing Tad to become a potato."
"Oh.
Carry on." Dail's Dad would usually have partaken in this kind of debate,
but a particularly tricky roundabout was looming.
"Hula
Hoops! They're a potato based snack. You could be a Hula Hoop. Think how much
joy you could bring."
"Potato
waffles."
"I
could be a wedge! And I'd never be short of work. It's impossible to get a job
as a human at the moment, but there are potatoes in everything."
"Like
onions. You could be an onion!"
"No,
onions make people cry."
"Can't
you make electricity from a potato?"
"You
could kill a man."
"What?"
"Get
a sack of potatoes and beat a man to death with it."
"That
would be a human doing most of the work."
"No
more wondering what your purpose in life is. You'd be a potato. Plain and
simple. Infinite potential."
"But
then again...I'd be a potato. Can potatoes appreciate how amazing they are? At
least as a human I can see that I don't have as much potential and maybe try
and do something about it, but as a potato I can't do anything myself."
"Oh
well if you're going to get all philosophical on us then maybe you should
leave."
"We're
on a motorway." (This from Dail's Dad).
"That's
it, I'm going to be a potato. I'll book the operation when we get back. I'm
going private though. If I went NHS I'd probably wake up as a parsnip or
something."
"That
would be embarrassing."
"Are
we there yet?" It is one of those wonderful traits of humans (that Tad
would probably miss once he'd become a potato), that no matter how old the
children were, if their parents were driving them somewhere, the words 'are we
there yet' would inevitably be thrust upon the driver at some point.
