If modern
audiences everywhere, presidential debate organisers in America, and the late
great naysayer Judas Iscariot know anything, it’s that all things come in
threes. All things. Whether they’re good, bad, or indifferently
mediocre. Should they be mortifying,
hallucinatory, or stunningly death-defying.
If they are decadent, flatulent or just appallingly low key.
All things.
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| Yes, with ample food, steadfast canine companion and well-plumped cushions, mine was true suffering |
People
expect life to present itself in triplicate, which explains one of the most
common questions I currently face. After
the obvious ‘What did you do to your leg?’,
and the curious ‘How exactly?’,
people familiar with my year thus far often conclude with the deeply
disconcerting…
‘I wonder what the Third Thing will be?’
Most humans
like a bit of structure to their world.
Some of us like a lot of it. A
system by which to assess what’s happened, and gauge what’s likely to come. I guess the rules of storytelling are as good
a system as any.
And yet…
there’s something so utterly ominous about the insistence that there should be
a Third Thing. I understand wanting to
give purpose to shitty timing, but… couldn’t we not?
Here’s my Thing,
my plea if you will: can’t we count the small things? Add them all together? The accrued stuff that topped off recent
events… like spending a month incapable of independently exiting a house filled
with photos of your recently deceased father – can that not be the Third Thing?
All the
focus on the BIG things seems to remove from the little moments, devaluing them
like so much window dressing to melodramatic main events. Here’s to the small stuff then, the minor
interruptions to regular programming…
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| A sampling of my convalescence wardrobe |
- To four
weeks spent wearing Finding Dory t-shirts with ‘Adorkable’ writ large across
them, because Mother Painefull knows you like comic book superhero branding,
and figured a blue fish urging you to ‘Just Keep Swimming’ was pretty much the
same thing.
- To your
doctor awkwardly asking why you have glitter on your injured, stitched up knee…
and having no reasonable explanation.
- To plucking
the patches of hair on your leg that were left behind by Mother Painefull after the whole
involuntary shaving incident.
- To finding
distraction in the realisation that the nerve damage to your leg means you can
pluck it and not feel a thing.
- To discovering
your formal referral letter from your surgeon calls you “This unfortunate 31
year old lady”.
- To the watch
list I assume my housemates are now on after they failed to bat an eyelid to the
request: “I need garbage bags, duct tape, and a container for used syringes.”
- To the kind hearts who sent flowers, the soul mates who brought chocolates, and the
legends who posted books.
I know what
you’re thinking – with the metal on the inside, and the lack of physical pain
on the outside, I’m basically a Bond villain in waiting. Or you’re thinking none of those things is
technically the Third Thing.
I get
it. Packaging events into trio formation
is a deeply human response – it’s attempting to assign logic to life’s random
luck. It’s noble. Thoughtful.
A bit fucked.
But if none
of those little moments are big enough, I’ve decided the Third Thing is all of them. I’d like that.
And with one
storytelling convention behind me, I can at long last move on to the next.
Get me to a
Training Montage.
Painefull
Out
P.S. For realists playing at home, the Third Thing
was also possibly when I arrived back in Melbourne 51 days later than planned… to
discover my car wouldn’t start, then spent $300 getting it going, then over
$800 getting it out of the carpark. Then
the engine cut out on the other side of the boom gate.
