Being unapologetically anthropomorphic and delighting in attributing human characteristics to animals, I only today discovered that the term applies to objects also. Well, yippee. Somehow finding out that what one does has a name sort of gives it enough acceptance of worth to be shared.
Keep this vehicle in mind. It was there at the start and there at the ending; a fellow observer.
These are the two main players.
I watched the antics but did not think to record them on camera as I was enjoying lunch on a sunny patio and agreeably distracted by all the other things that occur when one is sitting casually and watching the world go by .
Here is what happened. The salmon coloured napkin had been blowing around on the road in a frisky wind that was multi-directional as it can be near an intersection. I wondered where the napkin had come from and did it warrant a rescue and hanging through the chain-link fence (where a towel has been for several days!) in case someone had lost it and might want to find it. Too lazy to engage in a chase. Besides, the napkin seemed to be having fun.
Then the re-cycling truck came along and parked by the patio; two men went and got bags of stuff from the bank and dumped them into the receptacles which lifted, at the touch of a button, and deposited the contents into the truck. The perky wind grabbed a plastic container which the operator (a young man wearing a nifty spider web designed cap; wonder where he got it or if someone knit it for him) caught and threw back into the truck. The blue styrofoam tray went the other way and sneakily hid behind the truck until it drove away.
Almost immediately a car passed and drove over it. It made a crunching sound. It then also began to be blown back and forth and up and down the road by that errant (in the literary sense) wind. Unlike the quiet napkin, it made its progress known with brittle sounds.
Now I am not saying that napkin and that tray played tag or did a sort of dance or had a great cavort over the next half hour or that the wind played an errant (in the non-literary sense) role. I am suggesting it.
When I left, the napkin was under the van and the tray was pretty well as pictured on the road. Surprisingly enough he, I mean - it did not get run over again.
When I came back, an hour or so later, I noticed that napkin and tray were now both by the curb and eyeing each other.
Of course I had to get out the camera. Of course the owners of the van had to show up just then, gave me, the curb, the tires of their vehicle some puzzled looks before they embarked and drove away.
In my column- writing days I would have engaged them in conversation, reassured them I was taking pictures of the curb and not their van, perhaps explained what I was doing. It would have rounded out the ending, filled in the 500 words.
But back then, that was work. This is play.
(Just noticed, this post is just over 500 words.)
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