September 11th, 2020

Pelicans are such beautiful birds in flight.  For a rather large creature they are amazingly graceful.  They seem to float on the air as if they were mere flower blossoms.   They ride the air currents as easily as we might go down a slide.  Look at that beautiful form.  Tens, all 'round.

But when they land, especially on water, it's not pretty.  They crash into the water with a mighty Foosh!  Water sprays everywhere.  You can often actually hear the smack/splash sound and I wince thinking, "Man that's gotta hurt".  I guess it doesn't because the pelican does his crash landing into the water over and over again. Probably hundreds of times a day and it never looks any prettier.  In fact, I don't even have a really good photo of a pelican landing because mostly it kind of looks like this:

Ok that's a bit of an exaggeration.  But in truth, really it's mostly splash and feathers everywhere.

I feel like I am a lot like a pelican.  There are things I do pretty well.  For example:  I take some fairly decent photos.  I make good cookies.  And I can usually put together a grammatically correct sentence.

But there  loads of things that no matter how hard I work at it. No matter how many times I try, I am never ever going to get any better at it: 

Driving.  From the day I got my drivers license, 50 years ago, I was  anxious, uncomfortable and unenthusiastic about being behind the wheel.  That has not gotten any better. And in fact, I think it was only gotten worse over time.

Sewing.  I got kicked out of Home Ec in 7th grade for accidentally sewing my finger (along with the apron I was trying to make) and thereby accidentally breaking the sewing machine.  My needle-work skill has not gotten any better.  It can take me upwards of 15 minutes just to thread the dang needle and there is no guarantee that any button I sew on is going to stay put.  And I will require at least one bandage before I'm done.  

Any Sport.  Pick one, Any of them.  I suck equally at them all.  I'm not coordinated. I have absolutely Zero competitive gene, very poor depth perception and more importantly, I have no interest in sports. Any of them.

Any Artistic pursuit.  I actually am quite interested in art. Any sort. Sculptures, drawings, paintings of any kind.   Oils, water colours, charcoals, pastels, palette knife.......it is all fascinating to me.  So much so that at one time in my life I worked as a docent in an art museum.  I loved it.  It speaks to me, if you will.  BUT I have no artistic ability myself.  I cannot so much as draw a straight line with a ruler.  Regardless of how many classes I took, regardless of how sincerely hard I tried, I never got any better at it. Ratz.

The difference between me and pelicans is that while they are not graceful in their landings and in fact are rather hilarious about it, they continue to do it every day over and over and over.

Most of the things I'm not good at, I just don't do.  Or at least I do as little as possible.

I admire the pelicans attitude.  But it's not going to change mine