Quicksand

I don’t know a lot about quicksand apart from what I have seen on TV. If you happen to be chased through a jungle by a large group of angry natives and run headlong into a pool of quicksand you have limited options. From what I have learned, if you struggle you will sink faster, but I can’t imagine not struggling when you are sinking into the sand. There aren’t many options available to you. If you are blessed with good luck, there will be a stray root within your reach which will enable you to slowly pull yourself to solid ground. The angry natives will have caught up to you by this time and they are going to kick your ass from here to the other side of life.

If the gods are smiling on you there will be a man in a loin cloth that was raised by apes who will toss you a vine and then swing off with you, saving you from certain death by sand and native. You had best hope that you are a well endowed, young blond that goes by the name of Jane.

 

Most of my experience with quicksand is of the verbal kind. You know when you are saying something in a situation and everything you say just keeps dragging you further into the mire. That happened to me today. I don’t like to hear silence when I am sitting with company, so I fill it with almost anything that I can think of. Today I was telling my friend about something I had seen on facebook recently.

Keep in mind that my friend is visiting from out of town like he does every year around this time. He comes for a visit and we just hang around, me telling stories and he pretending to care about what I am saying.

I had read an article written by a woman who was fed up with people coming to visit her and her husband at their place in Phoenix. These people would never contribute to the food, gas or any of the other expenses that are incurred when you are entertaining visitors. I was well into this story when I realized that I was telling the story to someone who was visiting and didn’t contribute to the expenses incurred when entertaining a visitor.

I couldn’t just stop the story in the middle, and there was no way that I could continue talking. I faked a coughing fit, but since I had a glass of water beside me I couldn’t very well run into the house to get one. I looked around for anything that was extraordinary enough for me to change the direction of conversation. Where is that guy with the woman’s body and the man’s head when you need him? Why couldn’t someone crash a car right in front of the house? I began to hope that the king of the ants would surface and attack me for killing thousands of his subjects over the years.

I’m not often rendered speechless, but I just didn’t know what to do. If you ever find yourself in a situation where pretty much everything you say will just get you to sink deeper and deeper, just cut your mind off and let your mouth do what it does best. My mouth took control of my right arm, pointed it to a tree and said “Is that two squirrels having sex?”

My buddy just kept staring into the distance and I realized that he hadn’t heard a word I had said. Thankfully, he had learned to completely shut out my babblings.

The ape man swung out of the trees, plucked me out of the quicksand and rescued me from the natives. Now, I just have to convince him that he should keep looking for Jane…