A while back I was in Los Angeles for some training. For lunch some colleagues and I were walking around LA by the Staples center. I saw some pigeons strutting around. They brazenly strolled back and forth in front of me, heads bobbing like they were listening to some reggae that I could not hear. They pretend to be smooth as the breeze they float on, but their twitchy head snaps reveal their nervous and paranoid inner fears. I have found them in every city I have been to. I suspect they enjoy the tall buildings, dank and putrid alleys and the allure of smelly grey bearded guys pushing shopping carts full of aluminum cans, quietly muttering nonsense to their selfs.
Do you ever notice within yourself a quiet desire to do something that suddenly wells up in a usually unexpected time that derives from generations of self preservation or predisposition? Some people might grow angry in a tense situation when they might not otherwise be an angry person. Maybe you see a baby with fat cheeks and feel a desire to pinch. You might be driving by a lake on a hot summer day and feel like bailing out of your car and running head long into the open embrace of the cool blue waters. Perhaps you find yourself suddenly afraid of snakes when you see one in real life. I like to say that is why I don't skydive, bungee jump or go on roller coasters. hundreds of thousands of years of selective genetics has pre-programmed me, hard wired me... if you will, to not want to just jump off of a bridge.
One such desire I have that gurgles up to the surface whenever I see a pigeon is to run up and just punt that little guy way up into the sky where he came from. I am not sure where this want comes from. Especially when I see a big round pigeon strutting broad side to me tantalizingly close. I just imagine in my head the intense gratification of connecting with my toes, hearing the deep, hollow "THOOMP!" sound and watching the bird sail up 15 - 20 feet in the air, spread its wings and flap away. I just know it would be the greatest moment of my life.
Maybe it is the glint or the intensity in my eye, or their own set of self preserving dispositions that make them stay just far enough away from me that I can't actually take that long stride and swing my foot and boot them skyward. Perhaps that is the other reason they like cities because there are too many people watching that I suspect would take issue with me kicking a bird. But so help me, if I find myself in a quiet alley, a fat pigeon strutting too close, no one watching that would call the ASPCA, Humane Society, Child Protective Services, police, gasp in horror or think it would be nothing short of exhilarating to see me in my aviary field goal practice, then I am so lifting that leg back and swinging for the moon.
Hello?…Hello?…Is this thing on?
9 years ago
2 comments:
Even as a Missionary I wanted to punt Pigeons. Their legs are just the right height. You know your foot would land right in that sweet spot that would loft them into the air.
If you ever do I will give you props, that is for sure
Sterling,
I am still laughing in hysterics. I never would have guessed that a mild-mannered quiet person like you would have those kinds of thoughts deed in the eddies of your mind. If you do ever find the opportunity, I hope I am at the end other alley and can watch.
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