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Writer's pictureGary Gruber

I Once Petted a Fly

19 was a weird year for me. No..wait…let’s start over. My earliest memories are eating soap in the men’s room of a high school baseball stadium (4 years old). That was weird. Being sent to Miracle Mart at 12 years old to purchase tampons for my mother – that was super weird. I guess if I listed weird things that have happened to me in a chronological order, there probably wouldn’t have been anything remotely close to normal in my 75 years of traipsing around the planet.


So, what’s so weird about petting a fly? 19 was a difficult year for me. My mother yanked me out of Duquesne University to come home for a year because she was lonely. A year of freedom and I get kicked to the curb. So I do what any healthy young man would do. I get out my backpack and sleeping bag -- and plan an informal night in the woods. I preferred being alone to being with people, unless those people were cats.


I’ve spoken about the geographical region called “The Tubs” before. They are gone now but back in the day they were the quickest way to get close to nature. And boy did I get natural that day. I dumped my gear on the ground and quickly stripped off all my clothes. Spontaneous was a big thing for me. I used to rail at my female companions back then: “Be Spontaneous!” Even today I have no idea what that means.


Being au naturel was not so much of a big deal. Doing it on a hiking trail with other people around might have been slightly hinky…I’m still rolling that over in my cerebral cortex. So there I am with the birds and the bees and the forest and the trees – and this gigantic housefly lands on my thigh. I just sort of stare at it for a minute or so, and then I proceed to do something extra weird.


Slowly, ever so slowly I move my hand closer to the little critter. I’m fully expecting him to alight in a flash. He doesn’t. I’ve taken a breath and have slowed my heart rate down dramatically. As my forefinger moves closer and closer to the fly, my heart starts to race a bit. I start to question the metaphysical nature of reality. All of a sudden my finger is stroking the back of the fly -- and he is STILL NOT MOVING. This was real and not real at the same time. Yes, I am aware of the Law of Non-Contradiction. Yes, I am aware that in another universe, another lifetime, I would have broken it.


Just-not-that-day.


I am petting a fly and he seems to be enjoying it. All of a sudden this singular moment is shattered when a young couple walks by. Was it my nakedness? The fly? Me petting the fly? Zillions of thoughts are racing through my enlarged brain. I start to breathe again before I pass out. Somehow I don’t care what the answer to the question is. I just did something so singular, so personally spectacular, that all the analysis of the greatest minds of the time would not be able to agree on the momentum of events that met at the head of the needle that day.


I quietly got dressed, packed up my gear and went home. Realizing that nothing else I could do would shift the penumbra of light shining around me a single degree in any direction, I went home. I was ready for the next 56 years (not really but sort of) of life and the adventures that were in store for me. I had loaded myself with a mag of spiritual ammunition. I had no idea at the time what the significance of petting a fly would yield, but looking back now, reflecting on what was, I can honestly say: yes, I am weird…

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