Tag Archives: Ducks

How He Lost His Bad Habit

Watch Out For Ducks Who Stare

Once upon a time there was a family of ducks. These were normal ducks; they didn’t have a deformed kid who later found out that he grew up in the wrong family, like in that other story. This was your normal, every day run of the mill duck family. They, like all other ducks, had their own collection of problems.

The father duck didn’t really like his boss very much, nor his job, but he realized that as an adult, a wife and three little ducklings, he couldn’t really afford to go back to school to get an advanced degree. His wife was supportive, she realized he wasn’t fulfilling his dream sin his job, and went to work every day largely out of familial obligations, for which she was grateful, and helped to ease his pain any way she could. She was all too aware of the growing problem of duck fathers leaving their families for more personally satisfying pursuits.

The kids were just as normal, not the smartest ducks in the class, but not the dumbest. Their grades were ok, and if they continued to proceed, they would likely get into decent duck college. But this is where things began to get a little strange for this seemingly normal duck family.

As it turns out, the youngest duck, which happened to be a boy, had a collection of special gifts that he had known about since elementary school, but kept to himself, for reasons he wasn’t quite sure of. These gifts were very strange, and at first he was very worried when he found out about them. But as time went on, and he learned to accept them, he grew more accustomed to them, and even enjoyed them.

One of his special talents was to impose a momentarily bout of amnesia on anybody that he focused his mind on. They would be in the middle of a sentence, and then suddenly pause, completely unsure of anything. For several seconds, they would develop a complete and utter blank for everything. They would forget who they were, where they were, what their names were, who the people were around them, and even how to speak. This usually lasted about five seconds, and then everything came flooding back.

This young duck would have great fun playing with his teachers and friends with this secret trick of his. He dared not tell his friends or family about it for fear of what might happen.

When he was younger, there was a young boy who lived up the street who developed some strange behaviors, and they came and took him away. And nobody ever saw him again. So this young duck was terribly afraid that once they figured out he had this gift, they would sneak up behind him, and steal him away to the insane asylum, from which nobody ever returned.

And then one day, the duck made a startling discovery. By focusing his mind strong enough, he was able to permanently erase another’s memory completely. He was very angry with another boy who teased him at school when he discovered this. He focused his energy with great anger, and they boy stopped talking, and sat down with a look of complete and utter bewilderment on his face. And he never recovered. They came and took him away, drooling and smiling vaguely. His parents, especially his mother, wailed uncontrollably, as he was their only child.

They would visit him in the special hospital, but he never did anything to acknowledge them. He just sat with a blank expression on his face, and drooled, and occasionally mumbled strange, incoherent words that nobody understood.

The thing that surprised the duck the most was that he actually felt pleasure when he thought of him, alone in his small room, drooling with a blank look on his face. He started to look forward to doing this to other people.

Pretty soon he would go downtown, where nobody would recognize him. He would choose people at random, and “melt their brain,” as he thought of it. He would feel immense pleasure at seeing somebody who was otherwise normal, walking through their daily life suddenly turn into a drooling, nonsense speaking burden on society. Once he did it to a taxi driver, who promptly crashed, killing all the people in his car.

Then one day the unthinkable happened. He was getting ready to melt he brain of an unsuspecting girl, whom he smiled at but didn’t return the smile, when he heard a voice in his head.

“We know who you are. And we know what you’ve been doing. If you don’t stop, you will suffer unimaginable pain and anguish. Do not doubt us.”

The young duck spun around, but nobody was looking at him. Nobody even looked as if they were trying to ignore him. He shook his head, wondering if he imagined it. He focused his concentration back on the girl, and readied himself to erase her brain.

“You did not imagine this.” The voice said.

“This is your last warning. If you even consider meddling with the thoughts of another, we assure you your consciousness will be transported forever to a world of torment and agony.”

The duck looked at the innocent girl again, who looked at him finally, and smiled.

Unresolving Ducks of Confusion

This morning I was talking to a friend of mine in the UK, over the phone. I haven’t spoken to him in a while, but he is one of those friends that you just can pick up where you left off, you don’t need to keep up a lot of maintenance. Like if you have a pair of skis, you can just throw them in the garage when the winter thaws out and wait until next year.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s better to rent skis. I don’t think I use them enough to warrant buying a new pair every year, but some people get away with it. It’s like when you decide to try something new, and you put all kinds of effort and energy into it, and make big plans, then later decide that it wasn’t something that was as good as you thought it might have been back when you first started thinking about it.

But my friend was telling me about these new neighbors that he has, and they are keep strange hours. Not that they are loud or anything, it’s that they seem to be up half the night doing odd things. My friend wouldn’t really elaborate, but I got the idea that it had something to do with a new business they might be thinking up. His father, the guy next door, was telling him that they hope to corner the market on the particular niche that they are hoping to invest in.

Anyways, I was more interested in hearing if my friend was still married, because last I talked he was having some problems. Something about not being able to communicate very well. A lot of times people that are in relationships say the other person doesn’t’ communicate, until they remember that in order to understand what people are saying, you need to really pay attention to them when they speak. And it can be a lot more deeper than just words.

For example, my friend kept telling me that she didn’t like unresolved problems. Now those are two words that can mean pretty much anything. If someone asks me if I have any unresolved problems, I’d say of course I do. Everybody has unresolved problems. The problem with unresolved problems, is that in order to solve them, you need to make sure you are talking about the same unresolved problems, otherwise you might solve something that wasn’t even a problem to begin with.

When she started going on and on about unresolved problems, I thought she was talking about how her father treated her when she was a little girl, and she had all kind of deep emotional issues to deal with whenever she got close to being intimate with somebody. It turns out that her unresolved problem, at least when we were having the discussion, were about a phone bill she had called to inquire about, and the person was rude to her and hung up on her.  But then again, that might be related to her childhood after all, you never know these things unless you can really communicate in such a way that everybody knows exactly what you are talking about.

I was at a seminar once, and the teacher was illustrating this very point. She told everybody to think of a duck. And then she went around and asked everybody what duck they were thinking of. Some were thinking about a rubber duck. Some thought of a duck flying home for the winter. One guy thought of the AFLAC duck.

The point was, that even when thinking about a simple noun like “duck” a room full of people came up with a roomful of different ideas.

Now that is something to think about.

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