अशांत पानी

(originally posted 3/21/2018)

I apologize in advanced but there is a good chance that I’ll ruin a beloved song for you with this next bit of stupidity. I knew once I started wrestling with this that the song Like A Bridge Over Troubled Waters would never be the same for me.

But what exactly are troubled waters?

What constitutes troubled for water… and is a bridge really necessary?

I believe myself to be more like a dam holding back troubled waters. This may appear to make the waters less troubled, sitting all lake-like behind me, but rest assured there is typically a lot of trouble going on under a calm surface.

But again, what kind of trouble are we talking here?

Falling in water gets you wet, which is troubling, but it can also get you wet and then drown you. This for many people is significantly more troubling. My point, I think, is that either way it’s really not the water’s fault. Just because someone insists on not swimming well, it doesn’t follow that the water that ends up in their lungs is troubled just because the person couldn’t be troubled to learn to swim.

The water is probably just as put out as the person who drowned. I’m sure it aspired to greater locales than inside the lungs of a bad swimmer.

So what are troubled waters?

Regular, non-troubled water is a compressible liquid oxide of Hydrogen H2O. It is transparent. Colorless. It is odorless. It is tasteless.

Sound like anyone you know?

Would you categorize them as troubled?

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Or are we?

At 0 degrees C it freezes. At 100 degrees is boils. This seemingly innocent substance can move back and forth between a solid, a liquid and a gas.

Wait… hold on.

All of this fascinating stuff but, I’m desperately trying and failing to ignore the fact that a Simon and Garfunkel song immediately makes me think of Kate Micucci, because she’s in the most annoying ‘folk-comedy duo’ ever, Garfunkel and Oates, and her damn ukulele. While in the meaty hands of an enormous Hawaiian man in a grass skirt the ukulele might be a perfectly serviceable instrument, in her hands I view it only as a weapon to beat her to death with.

The still waters behind my dam ripple ever so slightly at the mental image of beating Kate Micucci to death with her ukulele.

You see, I had all these wonderful metaphors stacked up on one another just waiting for me to roll them out in an effortless effort to amuse and enlighten you, but then my waters got all troubled by the one person capable of troubling them. How can anyone amuse and enlighten when they are having vivid images of beating someone to death with a ukulele? And why isn’t it an ukulele instead of a ukulele? Even trying to include the instrument in a sentence is annoying. I’m surprised that it isn’t an Kate Micicci. I’m trying to be all still-waters-run-deep here and, just like in Scrubs and Big Bang Theory, Kate Micucci comes crashing in and fucks it all up. She is the most annoying person on the planet.

If I were water and sitting under a bridge where she was playing her damn ukulele I’d be sitting there troubled as hell and waiting for her to fall in so I could rush into her lungs and end her.

So I guess that answers that.

Troubled waters are any waters that have to listen to Kate Micucci sing.

Or act.

Or breathe.