APRIL 29, 2023 – Years ago, Beth, my wife, bought the World in an all-inclusive deal: seven seas, seven continents, seven thousand islands upon a wide-diameter sphere—mounted on a handsome, wooden floor stand. The garage sale price, fully haggled, came to five bucks.
The acquisition was for me (the consummate geography nerd) and fulfilled my long-standing desire for world domination. But as Beth placed the World at my feet, she pointed out that despite its sturdy stand, the planet was wobbly. I was two steps ahead of her, having just watched another round of Breaking News while she’d been out bargain hunting. I inspected the brackets that held the World to the stand and found myself challenged by the riveted fasteners. The crux of the problem lay under the sphere: a large, very loose, very inaccessible slotted bolt connecting the main brace to the top of the wooden stand. Without busting the rivets, there was no way to access and tighten the ridiculously loose, slotted bolt; no way to correct the World’s wobble, which explained why it emerged from a garage for the bargain basement price of five clams. The World at my feet was thus left to teeter defectively, as if in depiction of earth’s flawed and hubristic ruling race. I imagined it exiting our own orbit some day . . . for free.
Meanwhile, this troubled World, initially giving such delight, retreated to less prominent quarters until it eluded notice altogether.
This morning, however, brought a sudden mishap forever altering World history. While our visiting granddaughter was hard at work drawing at her little desk in the corner of her art world within our slightly larger habitat, I plumped down in an easy chair to engage in some sketch work of my own. BAM! My left elbow crashed boorishly into . . . the World—hitting the middle of Kazakhstan, to be exact. I hadn’t noticed the invisible, teetering globe squeezed into the narrow space between the arm of my “Mao chair” and the casement windows that yield a view into the wider domain of our backyard. Neither the World nor my elbow sustained any damage, but the jolt sent sound waves into the adjoining room where Beth was watching news of the world.
“Have you ever tried to figure out how to fix that wobble?” she asked offhandedly.
I felt slight shame. She herself is a “fixer” when she encounters something that needs . . . fixing. My dad and her dad were the same. Squeaky door? Recalcitrant window? Loose cabinet knob? Wobbly globe? They fixed it—immediately. Me? My middle initials are, “M.L.L.S.E.F.I” (“Me? Lazy; Let Someone Else Fix It” –except for my pet peeve: loose cabinet knobs). Thus it’s been with the wobbly World. I accepted its perpetual flaw as a reflection of my own.
Landing my elbow in Kazakhstan changed everything. I felt a sudden bolt of responsibility to help stabilize the World. “Carpe diem—et mundus” enjoined a mysterious, motivational voice. “Re-examine World connections and fix this sorry planet!” In the next moments, I experienced a dichotomous reaction:
1. At the North Pole I noticed a slotted brass bolt. This gave promise of easy removal, thus allowing the World to be released from its polar bracing and giving free access to the loose, slotted bolt that connected the bracing to the stand. Eureka! AND
2. How could I have been possessed of such inobservance of the World when it was first presented on that day when Beth squeezed it into our house? Shame!
I retrieved from the garage a heavy-duty, footlong screwdriver, my possession of which is as improbable as its provenance is unknown (I suspect it was part of my wife’s inherited personal effects, paternal side.) With the tool in hand, I felt armed with the confidence of Archimedes, to-wit: “Give me a lever, and I can move the world.” Deploying said lever while pressing my upper incisors over my lower lip, I removed the North Pole. Emulating Atlas, I removed the World from its South Pole and in jest, balanced the globe precariously between my shoulders before it rolled off and dropped to the carpet. Using tool and incisors again, I turned the bottom bolt until the brace was tightly one with the top of the stand. The excitement, however, had just begun. (Cont.)
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
