Scratch That

The desk in my office, at which I spend most of my waking hours, is about 15 years old, and it has, in that decade and a half, accumulated lots of scratches. Some of them appeared after moves—the desk had a home in at least three different flats before this house—but most of them are the result of living in a home with cats who love to sprawl on the desktop, and often resist when I try to shove them off.

I feel about the scratches the way I feel about my wrinkles: I am fond of them, and regard them as evidence of a life well-lived.

But I have one favorite scratch—or, rather a pair. They are parallel marks, no doubt from parallel toes, left at the edge of the desk on either side of a natural dark spot in the grain of the wood:


When I look at it, I see a person with hir arms thrown up into the air in a joyful and excited gesture. Considering the perpendicular scratch right at "shoulder" height, I suppose it could easily look like a drowning figure, but all I see is a glass half-full, so to speak.

It's hard to spend long feeling stuck, or helpless, or despairing, when every time one glances down, one sees a little figure reliably cheering with enthusiastic encouragement. I'll take it where I can get it!


Thank you, Desk Denizen!

It's no Jesus in a potato chip, but then few things are.