A tale of two swans
Buzz, sweetest of friends
And Clyde, big beautiful bully who wants to take over the already taken territory
I was wondering who would grow their new flight feathers back first, as neither male could fly, during this attempted coup. Turns out it was Clyde, who has and while he’s been hanging out with Bonnie in the way back, where I used to stand, and now that he can fly he came right up into the new place I was standing and chased Buzz around relentlessly, trying to pummel him. So I tossed a stick in the water and yelled, never to make contact but as a means of making a statement (you aren’t the boss of this pond) and some guy who works for “The InnKeeper” at the Wayside Inn told me NOT to throw sticks in the water and They Don’t Need Your Help. I said, “They quite obviously DO. He’s trying to kill him.” He told me the swans know him, and he’s known them since they were born in April (May, but I didn’t correct him), all 6 of them (I told him there were 8, hatched, in the beginning and he kept saying I was wrong, there were 6, and he kept challenging me with his phone saying, Do You Want To See My Video? and I finally said yes, I surely would, and he walked away. I wish he hadn’t seen me wing the stick in the water, I wish our meeting had been as pleasant as it should/could/might have been, but if you say I don’t know what I know, I short-circuit. I absolutely cannot proceed with any amount of decorum. I freeze, go belly up, as I did when I was 7 and someone called me stupid. Why should it matter whether there were 8 in the beginning? It doesn’t. But he was claiming a false authority and I am a zealot over, “Just say what’s true or don’t say anything”.
I wish I had done better. I wish I had stayed centered. I hoped he would circle back around so I could apologize and try again. Now I hope I never see him again because, well, he seems like kind of a jerk, lol. Why he had to pull the “I Know Them” (and you don’t) card on a total stranger is beyond me. Maybe pretty women intimidate him.
So I still have something to work on, after all these years of hard work. I was plenty angry and was already angry about the bullying. Oh wait, that’s how I felt about this guy. So I was trying to defend Buzz against bullying while feeling bullied. Where was my first loyalty? To Buzz (to my credit I didn’t quiz the guy about the history of this swan family, which I’ve been friends with for all these years. He wouldn’t know Buzz from Clyde or Bonnie from Bella for a million dollar bet and it doesn’t matter but he should have just said hello, don’t throw things, and left it at that. And I never did throw anything else, in case he was watching, lolol. Thanks for listening.
