Feigning Death

Matt, my Tuesday mailman, told me our regular mailman died in his sleep three months ago. I just thought he had a new route. He was young and sweet and I'd hear him talking and laughing on his phone as he was on our front porch delivering the mail. Oh, how sad.

*               *               *

When I arrived at the YMCA pool there were nine beefy men in the water. Some were wearing scuba wet suits open at the chest, revealing tattoos. Others were fully suited up, wearing masks, fins, and tanks. Are these guys firemen? I asked the lifeguard. Yup! This is a training.

Their trainer was on the pool deck at the shallow end with long, thin, yellow ropes. He worked with teams of three men at a time. The team wore blindfolds over their masks (they looked like sleep masks) and were instructed to find the body of a plastic dummy at the bottom of  the pool. Their task was to bag the body while blind. This was their ocean and pond rehearsal. 

As I swam laps I could see the men underwater, dark figures with long black fins in the deep end. They were moving together slowly, at the bottom of the pool, like a demented tea party. I felt like I was swimming in a lobster tank.

I thought of the parable of the blind man and the elephant. 

The parable of the blind men and an elephant is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what an elephant is by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience, and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience. They ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true. The parable originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant)

Slowly the blind swimmers maneuvered the dummy into a yellow mesh body bag, zipping it up then strapping it into a harness. When they were done they blew air into a day-glow green bag that rose to the surface as a signal and marker. Then everything and everybody came up and out of the water. The beige dummy was dismantled into a strange yogic posture with water flowing out of its knee joints, and the yellow bag was folded up. 

*               *               *

Later in the afternoon, on my dog walk on Milton Street in Blackstone, a nine-year-old girl we often see told me about crickets in China. The Chinese saw them as pets who would bring happiness and good luck, and often kept them in small cages over their beds to listen to their music. 

 Back home, curious, I researched crickets and praying mantises.

Female praying mantids do cannibalize their partners. In some instances, she'll even behead the poor chap before they've consummated their relationship. As it turns out, a male mantid is an even better lover when his brain, which controls inhibition, is detached from his abdominal ganglion, which controls the actual act of copulation. Cannibalism is variable across the different mantid species. It occurs among praying mantids between 13–28%
of natural encounters in the field. (https://www.ashchurchprimary.co.uk/serve_file/643930)

*               *               *

While at my desk I could hear and see four boys running around the parking lot playing tag at dusk. One boy was shooting a toy gun that lit up glowing red. The other three boys when shot were collapsing onto the asphalt, feigning death.

They climbed onto the roof of the attached shed in back of the neighboring apartment house. I watched them use an abandoned chain link fence gate as an impromptu ladder. I knew that the building's fire escape, now in easy reach, could be next. Instead, the boys elected to climb down. One boy was afraid and wanted to just jump off the roof. Another boy offered a hand while standing on the fence gate and helped him down. 

They came running around the lot again and climbed back onto the roof  but his time it was dark out. I didn't want them to get hurt. I texted the landlord.