A Leisurely Stroll

In “Anecdotal Tales”, stories will be told. Some will be fun, some will not. Some will be great, some will be less so. Some stories are true, some are merely possible. This is one of them.

A Leisurely Stroll

Kate was having a bothersome time keeping herself collected and moving.  Technically, it was not Kate’s problem at all, it was Mary’s –Mary being the name that Kate’s parents had given her, however Kate found the name lacking in panache and style, and therefore shirked it whenever possible.  Kate was attempting to balance three bags full of groceries in one arm while carrying her yoga mat and purse in the other.  The task at hand would have been negated entirely had her boyfriend not been the sort of significant other that would “liberate the car from its dungeon-like encasement”, as he was fond of saying, and driving it out on long treks through back roads, up hills, and generally wherever Kate wasn’t.  While Kate appreciated her boyfriend’s easy-going manner, she reasoned that her manner might be more relaxed if her own car was at her disposal.  She sighed; switching her loads to opposite arms, and then crossed as the light signaled its consent.

The entire day had been an endless barrage of vexing troubles.  Her thesis, which she felt by the sheer size and page-count alone was an achievement, had been inexplicably and unanimously denied by her peer review board.  What she considered “important” and “all-encompassing”, her colleagues had callously labeled as “pretentious”, “wavering”, and “unfocused babblings”.  As Kate looked at the multiple copies, complete with veritable seas of red ink threatening to drown out her words underneath the scribbling, she thought of the sort of damage she could inflict with these massive reams of paper.  Could not an attitude adjustment be made in her favor if she only applied liberal amounts of physical force?  Even a paper cut might instill more civility into those that had been so quick to cut her down.  No, Kate told herself, sinking to their level was not the way to go about things.  There was also the small matter that at five foot four, her stature was less than imposing and there were ten of them to only one of her. 

Kate’s shoes, being more fashionable than sensible in the cold weather, joined in the burdens and taunts that made her day unpleasant.  On a typical day, her routine stroll would have been markedly relaxing.  She would feel each shoe hug her foot comfortably while still allowing a portion atop her foot to breathe happily.  And yet, when faced with the inches of snow that had fallen late in the night, Kate’s shoes lacked the wherewithal and resilience to keep her lower limbs content.  The snow had melted in parts, true, but the slushier chunks leapt to meet her shoe, diving into to the open holes and clinging to her toes.  She could feel her feet turn whitish as the unpleasant “squish-sqash” noise chimed in at every step.  Kate doubted that frostbite was likely to set in anytime soon, but she also doubted that the Romans really thought that Nero would let his city burn without much of a fight.  Better safe than sorry, she told herself.

So it was with great contentment and relief that she walked in the front door of her apartment.  She flung her purse to the floor, letting the copies of her rejected hard work fall about, littering the entryway.  Her cat, Mavis, walked up to greet her and rubbed her whisker-adorned face against Kate’s leg.  Too tired to return the show of affection, Kate made her way to her couch and fell upon the over-stuffed cushions, her groceries spilling out haphazardly across the living room.  She watched an apple roll towards the fireplace and considered getting up and adding some semblance of order to her manic living conditions.  Kate lifted her head off of a pillow, checking to see if Mavis would scurry over and try to eat her recently acquired food.  She saw no sign of the feline, then turned her head just enough to look at the front door.  Sure enough, there was her cat, rolling and purring in the pile of papers where she left them.  Kate kicked off her shoes, smiled, and contented herself knowing that her cat had a refined appreciation for important literature.

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