Drains

Ever wonder where the water goes after you’ve rinsed your mouth and put away the toothbrush?  Recently, I came across “The Moving Finger,” a short story by Stephen King which was also made into an odd little short in 1991’s “Monsters” video collection.  A New York City apartment-dweller hears a tiny noise coming from the bathroom, and upon investigation, finds a little index finger poking out at him from the bathroom sink.  Upset, confused, and eventually freaked out, the man goes on the attack, using everything from drain cleaner to a discount pair of hedge trimming shears.  As the neighbors hear the struggle and NYC’s finest arrive, our leading fella’s sanity is called into question—just what in the world happened to this guy?

Upon hearing King’s author’s notes on the story, we find that he wrote the story to illustrate just how wrong things can go for normal people going about their everyday lives.  Driving yesterday on a local toll road, I saw four sets of black tire marks on the fresh asphalt, and as traffic slowed, saw the lines intersect into the remnants of two SUV’s who had presumably started out the day “on track.”  In a local town, police SWAT teams responded to an accidentally dialed cell number, after his wife mistook his muffled car stereo audio for a gangster-style attack upon his schoolroom.  Presumably, she assumed that his day may have gone…wait for it… down the drain.

But King’s story isn’t about things going DOWN the drain, it’s about something coming UP from it.  It isn’t about things falling apart so much as it is bizarre happenings coming out of nowhere to throw our lives out of line.  When a United Airlines pilot recently spilled his coffee on the plane’s radio and triggered a highjack alert, that was his fault.  When something happens that we can’t explain, it’s a little more difficult to pin down. 

I plan on sitting down and watching the “Moving Finger” video online this weekend.  For me, it’s a great reminder that no matter how much I may try to line everything up and make my own plans, there’s only so much I can control.  If you read such things, the New Testament book of James goes a step further:

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.  What is your life?  For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. (ESV)

There’s only so much we can control, and admitting that is not only honest and humbling, it’s freeing.  King is echoing the point made in the James excerpt:  we don’t know what tomorrow will bring along, and we’re giving ourselves too much credit when we insist otherwise.  It may be hard to know who to point that moving finger at, and even the sharpest pair of hedge clippers may not protect us from everything that comes up the bathroom drain.

“The Moving Finger” can be viewed online at Google video at the following address.  Happy viewing!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5741702786654941097#