Twine. What is it?
That is the question I found myself pondering yesterday evening while seated in my favorite chair in the converted apple barn I call home, which, I should mention, was renovated entirely through the Klingenschoen Fund at what I consider an outrageously reasonable tax arrangement. Twine is string. Or is it rope? Is there a difference? Does anyone in Moose County even care? You’re welcome for the inquiry.
I might not have considered twine at all had Koko not knocked a ball of it off the kitchen counter at precisely 7:14 p.m. — the exact minute, I later discovered, that Lois’s Luncheonette reported a break-in involving stolen register tape. Coincidence? My moustache says otherwise. It tingled with such ferocity that I nearly spilled my Squunk water, which, I will note, I pay for myself despite the fact that the K Fund could theoretically classify hydration as a charitable operating expense. Which it should.
Koko batted that ball of twine across the floor with a deliberateness that can only be described as forensic. Yum Yum, meanwhile, sat on the dictionary, open — and I am not making this up — to the T section. These cats are smarter than most of the residents of Pickax, a town of three thousand souls that has somehow produced eleven arsons and four murders since I moved here. Why does no one find that statistically remarkable? Why does no one ask questions? That is my job, apparently, and mine alone.
The twine itself cost me $2.39 at Toodle’s Market, a price I find unconscionable. I only bought it because someone — and I suspect the blue jays who have been brazenly pillaging my birdseed supply — had shredded my previous ball. Nothing is safe. Not my birdseed, not my twine, and certainly not my cats, whom I must guard vigilantly against admirers who would steal them if given half a chance.
But what can one do with twine? One can tie things. One can measure things. One can, as Koko demonstrated, unravel it across an entire room and then stare at you as though you are the one who has made a mess. Is that not profound? Is that not, in its way, a metaphor for journalism itself?
You’re welcome, Moose County.
Twine.
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