left holding The Bag

(Originally posted 9/22/2022. Just watched the Netflix documentary on Nickelback and I felt a rush of shame for piling on. They are much better than Smash Mouth.)

Like any dog owner well knows, the act of mowing the lawn is always started by cleaning up crap in the backyard. Today was no different.

Until…

Pooper scooper in hand, I was having difficulties with the bag. Although admittedly there was a breeze blowing, this bag seemed particularly uninterested in receiving the contents of the scooper and much more interested in inflating and flying away. Every time I tried to drop the poop into the bag, it would twist and contort itself in such a way that it would fill with air and start spinning crazily around my hand, as if to escape and go floating into the upper atmosphere.

Eventually I lost my temper and, I swear on all I find holy that this is 100% true, screamed at the bag “You’re not a fucking balloon. You’re a bag! Now start acting like it.”

After that the bag seemed to lose the will to resist and shortly after I had deposited no less than a dozen piles of shit into it. A short walk to the garbage can brought an end to this little drama.

As I began to mow I realized beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am not a particularly good writer. Dan Brown would have immediately recognized the metaphor of the bag and typed up two or three hundred pages of a book that would end up becoming a best seller.

The Bag or some such title.

Not me.

I couldn’t even figure out if I was the good guy or the bad guy in the metaphor. Clearly during my brief outburst I was just stating the obvious. The bag was a bag. It was not a balloon. If all bags behaved as badly as this one did the backyards of America would smell terrible and children running back and forth through sprinklers would be a thing of the past. On the other hand, could I truly be upset that it aspired to greater things than holding shit? That it perhaps dreamt of soaring high above the Earth?

And the wind. Was it just a natural occurrence, the result of gases moving from high-pressure areas to low-pressure areas, or was it a conspirator?

These are the the kind of analogies that would give The New Yorker a whopping literary boner and scramble to get ol’ Lance under contract (at least until they realize I’m the kind of writer that uses the term “whopping literary boner”).

But no, all I could think about as I plodded around behind the mower is a Youtube video I recently watched explaining how Nickelback became the most hated band in the world and wondering if there was a way I could twist and contort these bag metaphors into a defense of Nickelback (I’m not proud of it, but damnit I sang along to How You Remind Me back when it was on the radio 24/7 like everyone else).

I couldn’t. I mowed and mowed and was finally putting the mower back in the garage when I had to admit defeat. It can’t be done.

My last thought before bringing down the garage door was “I wonder if the bag would have settled for being a kite.” Later I wondered if Nickelback would settle for being Smash Mouth.

Once again I’m left hoping you’re a better reader than I am writer.