MADE LIKE THIS

In spring, there’s something I find fascinating: the machine that picks up winter gravel in the streets, the little truck with the brushes. I watch it with full-on Charles-Tisseyre-esque enthusiasm.

Listen to this.

In winter, the snowplow pushes snow and dumps gravel onto my lawn. In spring, I notice there’s gravel on my lawn, and it bugs me. So what do I do? I throw it back into the street. Then, you see, the gravel Zamboni comes by and picks it up.

That makes me pretty happy. It’s like a complete ecosystem, that whole thing. Everybody is useful in there. Everybody gets something out of it.

It’s beautiful. Nature really is well made.

At some point, I realized that this Zamboni was making me think much more deeply than I was ready to admit...

I started putting myself in the Zamboni’s place. Or really, in the place of the person driving it. For that person, well, that’s their job. How do you end up becoming a gravel-sweeper driver? It looks fun, doing that. Imagine: you wake up in the morning, nobody has abstract expectations about your work, you start the machine at sunrise, and you pick up gravel.

There was gravel, you pass by, no more gravel. Everybody’s happy!

Everybody can see that the street is clean. Everybody appreciates it. Damn, I would love a job like that. A job everyone can see, everyone can understand, where you feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself.

A job where you get ready the night before, pack your little lunch, give your girlfriend a little kiss, mwah!, and say: “I will be back at exactly 5 p.m., sweetheart, after making my community cleaner.” Then she watches you leave, proud of what you have become, proud of your place in the universe.

Damn, I would love that.

But I can’t seem to have that, me, an 8-to-5 job. I’ve tried really hard. Sometimes I look up at the sky, both fists in the air, and I yell: “Damn it, Mother Nature, why did you make me like this? WHY? Why do I have to complicate my own life, huh?”

Me, in this whole story, well, I’m the one dirtying the street. Yep. That’s me. That kind of selfish. My precious little self does not like the rocks? WELL HERE, I THROW THEM IN THE STREET. DEAL WITH IT, YOU LUCKY BASTARD. Lucky to have a job people understand. Lucky to have a job everyone can see.

And on top of that, want to hear the best part? My three-year-old son is OBSESSED with the gravel machine. He cannot help yelling: “DAD! DAD! ... QUICK! COME SEE! MY HERO IS GOING BY IN THE STREET! Look at his beautiful blue machine spinning those brushes! Wow, it really picks up everything, huh?”

At first, I took it badly... Damn pretentious Zamboni driver, showing off his lifestyle on my street.

But after long reflection, because I digest things slowly, I told myself it takes all kinds to make a world. If I weren’t there throwing rocks into the street, well, the Zamboni would have no reason to exist.

Without that experience, my little boy probably would not become fascinated by nature, like my own hero:

Charles Tisseyre .

I tell myself that, without the gravel sweeper, there might not even be Découverte on Radio-Can on Sunday nights.

In the end, I realize that we all have our place.

If one day my little boy tells me he wants to become a Zamboni driver, I’ll shed a little tear, and I will know that everything is right in the universe. I will know he’ll be useful, he’ll be happy, and he’ll be part of a great ecosystem that I, humble citizen, will keep feeding one shovelful of gravel at a time.

It’s a wheel that keeps turning.

Thank you, Mother Nature, for making me like this.

I’m sorry :’).