Another Lunch by the Lake

Whenever the Muted Guerrilla powers down for a few months, I always struggle to start it back up again, as I search for that great topic or blend of ideas to swirl out of my head into something worth reading. My new son Leo, I find, is easy to talk about, but it is easier for me to just smile in dumbfounded pride about him. Plus, I’d like to think that I have some other things going on in my life. With this in mind, I return to favorite subject, as today’s rain does not take away from yesterday’s lunch by the lake.

(In my head, everyone is cheering right now at the mere mention of the Lake Where I Eat Lunch Often.)

It was quite the October day. The season is just starting to show itself in bursts of color among the blanket of green. The air, claiming a slight chill that hints of rain to come, is still and helps maintain the perfect mirror image of autumn stretched down by the lake. The only thing to disturb this quaint scene is a family of ducks nearing maturity that cuts a path through the water.

For me, it was but an hour respite away from the busy hustle-and-bustle of the everyday. It is an hour for me to take in the majestic views of nature and enjoy a simple lunch of Peanut Butter and Jelly, which is often the single highlight of my day. But as my mouth watered and my eyes grew wide, I noticed that this day’s sandwich was covered in mold. Blast.

Disappointment comes in two forms, or maybe more, or maybe there’s only one form and there’s another word that formed my emotions as I uncharacteristically took my sandwich, and with a sly grin, tossed it, whole, into the lake.

The result was surprising. First, the swarm of sea birds and geese that dirty up the wharf some fifty feet away did nothing. In the past, I have had to shoo those begging scavengers out from under me, even going as far as stomping my feet to send them away, but I have never once fed those infernal beasts and it was with some pride that I realized they were not moving. I must have gained their respect.

The sandwich, however, floating aimlessly in the still, did not escape a flurry of activity. For at first it looked like one creature, spiraling and writhing within itself, that lunged at my castaway lunch from below, but upon closer inspection, hundreds of individual fish of varying sizes and shapes, none bigger than four or five inches, could easily be spotted, fighting their way to the handcrafted goodness. I don’t believe it was a school of fish, but more like those marching bands made up of home-schooled children from all over that so ravenously took to my moldy Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.

The bubbling madness quickly began shredding the sandwich and ruining the calm still of the lake. As lunch reshaped from the familiar square of sliced bread into a circle and then, well, a smaller circle, it moved a good twenty feet before hitting some water plants where the frenzied circus continued, sending chaotic ripples throughout the lake and crippling what was no longer the picturesque scene of my beautiful lake.

Throughout this, the birds remained standing, cleaning themselves, on the soiled planks of the nearby wharf. And I returned to what was left of my lunch.