I am the Proverbial Tortoise

 Whenever you see a professional sports team with a wimpy name, like the Marlins, that probably means that the name is an homage to an animal that’s indigenous to and synonymous with that area. If everybody did that, we’d have a sports team called the Chicago Pigeons. And our archrivals would be the New York Rats. (It’s true that we have plenty of rats of our own here in Chicago. But those New York rats look like they don’t mess around. If their rats took on our rats in a fight to the death, I’d put my money on the New York rats. But if their rats took on our pigeons, I’d put my money on our pigeons.)

In Chicago, sooner or later, everybody engages in pigeon chasing That’s what happens when you come across a flock of pigeons who are gathered on the ground pecking on bird seed or something. Something comes over you and you just start running full speed at the flock of pigeons because you know what will happen . The pigeons will fly away all at once and that’s really cool to experience. And the pigeons always wait until the last minute to take off. It’s like they have radar that tells them not to skedaddle until they see the whites of your eyes. Quite often, when driving the streets of Chicago, you’ll see a pigeon in the middle of the road. You’re closing in on it fast and it’s still in the middle of the road and it looks like there’s no way you’re going to be able to avoid splattering a pigeon. But at the very last instant the pigeon flies away and somehow manages to escape.

It used to be that whenever I saw a flock of pigeons bustling around on the ground, I’d drive my wheelchair right into it full blast. I still do, but when I drive full blast I’m a lot slower than I used to be. Because I’ve programmed my chair so that sometimes when I go full blast I feel like I’m dragging my ass. But I do that so won’t get jostled and discombobulated all to hell when I hit a bump. The downside is that when I charge full blast into a flock of pigeons, they just walk away. I’m moving so that they don’t even have to fly away.

I am the proverbial tortoise. But sometimes the moral of the story is that slow and steady wins the race. So sometimes I get the last laugh.

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