Wound Too Tight

 

There is a factory someplace where a machine automatically screws the lids onto the new jars of peanut butter as they travel along a conveyer.

We don’t get to see that aspect of getting the peanut butter to our house, we just see the completed product on the supermarket shelf.

Many of us have days overfilled with things to do.  We wake up with mental lists of items to check off during the day, and so we must schedule our activities and errands that we don’t end up going in circles. 

Neither are we exposed to the loud factory noises made by the peanut butter packaging machines.

We go about with nothing but our own mental chatter, going over and over each step of the day, that we don’t forget anything.  Occasionally we are bombarded by bits of news as we pass a television, or newspaper stand.  Other times external forces dictate some deviation to our activities, like stopping for gas, or getting a flat tire.

Only on rare occasions do we struggle to unscrew the lid, for somewhere walking around that factory is an inspector, whose own checklist requires a calibration reading be taken on the lid machine.

Oscar Davies is currently going through a divorce.  His mental chatter is currently louder than the machines he works around.  His life is in shambles, and as unfortunate as it may be, he has not checked his own gas gauge.

That, dear fun-seeker, is why you struggled so much to open the peanut butter this morning.