The WordPr
ess word for today’s daily word prompt was “cling”. I thought about that. Cling; one of those words that sound weirder the more you say them. It could be the sound a medium sized bell makes; like a combination of the big “clang” and the little “ring” – cling. I’ve heard of Cling Peaches but I don’t know why they’re called that. Do they stick to the roof of your mouth when you eat them? Maybe they cling to the branch making them hard to pick. Would that make them Cling-ons, or rather Klingons?
Static cling is great for sticking butterflies to buildings in Manhattan if you’re Microsoft, but it’s not much fun if you’re a woman wearing a polyester miniskirt in midtown during a windstorm. I know my socks mock me while they cling to the insides of my dryer, just out of sight, waiting to bite me with blue lightning should I try to dislodge them. How about those little bits of plastic wrapping you remove from a package and then they get stuck on you? There I am, shaking and waving my hands wildly trying to remove the shreds of plastic clinging to me as those around me back away. I have a better chance of becoming airborne.
Do you dread trying to use cling wrap? Nearly without fail, I yank the entire roll out of the box when I attempt to tear off a piece. Once I have a piece of wrap in my hand, it wants to cling to itself more than anything else! If I can salvage the wrap after several minutes of unsticking and unfolding, there’s still no guarantee it will cling to what I wanted to protect. Those commercials showing bowls of food being held upside down while covered with cling wrap are hard for me to believe as are the ones showing a hungry tiger taking a pass on a steak wrapped in cling wrap.
Clinging to the side of a cliff is good if you’re a rock climber. However, clinging to a myth is not a good way to avoid reality. Myths have a way of evaporating leaving those who subscribe to them clinging to nothing but mist. Cling to the truth and the truth will cling to you. Have you ever noticed how smells cling to your clothes, skin and hair? Just a few moments in a cigarette smoke filled room leaves you smelling like an ashtray.
So – if we’re going to cling to something, or have something cling to us, what would we want that thing to be? I think that thing should be hope. Just because our favorite princess has escaped the clinging grasp of Earth is no reason to let hope slip away. Cling to hope like those balloons your uncle rubbed on his head and stuck to the wall at your 5th birthday party. Defy gravity and cling to hope like that lizard on the ceiling in that cheap hotel room in Arizona. Cling to hope like I’m clinging to my word prompt.
© 2017 Curt Savage Media
Not Words Alone from Curt Savage Media 