JOY ALONG THE WAY: DEADLY ROUTINE? GET A TROLL!

I strolled alongside the creek bank last week, looking for signs of homeless, old Troll. Now with Thanksgiving coming on, I think of all my creatures, real and otherwise, and wonder if they've shored up their winter homes and have plenty to eat. I haven't seen whisker nor footprint of old Troll since his bridge was torn down. I'm waiting patiently, well almost patiently, for the park and city powers that be to reconstruct the bridge. Maybe they're waiting for the rock walls of the creek to be extended or maybe they don't intend to replace it. So many things have to fall into place before a troll comes home.

The little, nature-placed shelf across the creek is still in place. The water still flows murmuringly over it. However, there has been a change there, too. The mud banks of the creek fall inward all along the creek's journey through the park. Some of the bank has fallen in close proximity to the rock shelf, creating a backwater eddy. Someone, before my stroll, had thrown a plastic, red, detergent bottle into the creek, or maybe it somehow got flooded in by recent rains. The bottle was caught and trapped in the eddy. It took me a little while of just standing and staring before I became aware of its dilemma. I watched it go round and round a half dozen times before I was convinced that it wasn't going to get out of that place until the creek flooded again or until someone could give it a little help. As if the bottle cared!

The bottle and eddy were across the creek from me and my bank was too steep and muddy to descend. I looked around for some crumbling hunk of dirt to throw at the eddy to momentarily disturb the flow of the circling waters. Nothing, nowhere. Round and round went the red bottle. I almost became mesmerized by it, transferring my thoughts of its entrapment to thoughts of how some lives must be caught in such unutterable weariness or deadly routine.

There are lots of ways for human beings to get out of deadly routines by themselves if willing to make the effort. The bottle, having no mind, has to tolerate it until help, natural or manmade comes along. Again, as if the bottle cared!

If you're tired of the same old breakfast food, going out the same door, taking the same route to work, work at the same job all day, come back home, same bed, same breakfast, etc., change it!

I think Mama instinctively had something like this in mind when she said, "Now you kids go out this door for a while," when we started to school. It wasn't that there was carpet to wear out or door latches being overworked. It was Mama's way of changing routine. Going out one door, we went past the rain barrel and could have one last look at ourselves in the water or, if hot weather, poke in a finger and see the wiggle tails scramble to the bottom. Going out the other door, we went by Penny's dog house. He would come out and walk a way with us. Out the front door, we could set in motion the glass wind chimes which were always pleasant to hear.

"Be ye renewed by the renewing of your mind." What wonderful advice from someone who literally got out of deadly routine by the supernatural renewing of his mind..

When you get caught in an eddy of no seeming escape, try white pepper instead of black for a change, maybe even red. Take a different way to work. Sing a new song. Use a different door. Part your hair on the other side. When you think you have exhausted all avenues of escape, get a troll! They're free.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.