Not Even Remotely Dumb *


For the past few weeks I've been enjoying the spring-like weather and going out for morning walks. During this time it has also occurred to me that God slash the Universe slash Nature was speaking to me in code. It has taken me up until yesterday to decipher it and it is not good.

It started when I noticed that the animals were extra friendly to me. The squirrels ran towards instead of away, the ducks honked hellos and waddled closer. The cats rubbed against my legs and dogs sniffed happily, wagging their tails. Even the dreaded hawk that spies from the dead, spanish moss covered tree was a no show. I began to suspect then that I was about to receive a message from the divine.

And one morning I found it.

I was rounding the bend of the smaller "pond", though they call it lake Evelyn, when I looked to my left to see if there was the familiar shape of the alligator ridges, poking from beneath the water. That's how I spotted it, in the water, it was spelled out, using the leaves from the water lilies. What was ingenious about it was that it needed its own reflection in order to create sensible ciphers. So that, at any other time of day the shadows would be slightly off and it would no longer create a letter. I knew then that it was only meant for me.

It spelled: K.R.O.D.

I tried every combination of words to decipher this dubious acronym. At first I thought it was a hearty cheer for me to continue my binge reading, thus shouting "Knowledge! Read Or Die!" or perhaps it said cryptically, "Know rest on days". Should I nap during the day? Or did it stem from my Catholic school upbringing and really say "King rightly outsmarts devil"?

Then I began to wonder if it really spelled out a full message and I was just not looking hard enough. What if it really was saying "LooK RODents!" or "LinK ROD Serling" which meant I should be wary of rodents of unusual size or do something about the Twilight Zone, possibly linking to it somewhere or other. So I looked around but couldn't see any other letters that could make fuller words.

I walked by every morning and spent my days thinking it through. And Eureka! I had the solution. Employing Rich's patented IF/THEN formula I came up with: If I could only read it because of its inverse in the water, then perhaps I should use its inverse to come up with the word. Got it!

And it spelled out...




DORK.

Hahahaha very funny God slash Universe slash Nature.

Maybe, instead of spending weeks on it, I should have just gone to Urban Dictionary and read the second definition of KROD.


So I took this picture today and you can sort of see how it used to spell something that might have been KROD if you kinda squint at it, in the left side middle. But of course it was windy and rainy the past few days. Ah, why do I always feel like the Warner Bros. cartoon man who owns the singing frog?

Me.

* P.S. It should really say "not even remotely dorky", which is of course a NERD, but I didn't want to spoil the rest of the story.