How does anything get stuck, really? It is certainly never anyone’s intention to be stuck in anything. But there we are.
People, animals, and things get stuck all the time.
Of course, the biggest debacle of stuckness has been fiercely in the news lately. It is the container ship in the Suez Canal, which was very much lodged in place.
If you have been paying attention to the news, you already know that the ship is as long as the Empire State Building is tall — that is around 1,312-feet. And the part of the canal is only 985 feet wide at the place of the error. The officials are saying it was a mighty wind that caused this mishap.
But. I can assure you. When it all comes out in the end, we will see that someone was asleep at the wheel. In other words, operator error. I’d bet my favorite tugboat on that one.
Anyway, to be stuck is rarely fun. The fun only happens in the occasional movie, when the starlet gets stuck in a downpour under some awning with the hunkiest guy in the movie. In that bit of stuck, they usually end up kissing, at the very least.
For the most part, though, being stuck is not good. How many times have we seen a kid get their head stuck between the rungs of the banister? It’s our ears. They fold in when the head presses forward — and then act as anchors on the way back out. The simple solution would be to cut off the kid’s ears and slip the head right out of there. It may hurt in the beginning, but later in life, it will be a real ice-breaker in starting conversations.
I’ve seen people get their hands stuck in jars. There is always that look of panic that crosses their faces in those cases. The same goes when rings get stuck on fingers. But a little cooking oil or dish soap usually saves the day.
The worst case of stuck was made into a movie with James Franco. He plays Aron Ralston, the guy who gets wedged in-between a boulder when he’s hiking. The guy that had to cut his own arm off with a pocket knife. That takes stuck to an entirely different level.
I’ve had peanut butter stuck on the roof of my mouth before. That is as adventurous as I get.
About ten years back, a man was stuck in an elevator for 41 hours. He went out for a smoke break, and that’s when the elevator quit working. No food, water, cell phone, or watch. To top things off, he was claustrophobic. Eventually, someone noticed. That’s a bad stuck too.
Oh, it comes at us from all different directions. The average American commuting “to and from an urban center will spend 42 hours sitting in traffic every year.” So if you have worked for 35 years and this remained the norm? You would be spending more than 61 days stuck, sitting in your car, waiting for the wheels to move again.
Stuck in traffic, stuck in snow, stuck in quicksand. Stuck in cement on the way down to the bottom of the river.
And then, sadly in life, we see people who are stuck in bad relationships. This happens more often than any of us likes to see.
Another part of humanness is being stuck in bad habits. It ends up killing some people, at its very worst.
The thing about being is stuck is that it rarely comes with any kind of warning. One day we are free and skipping along the sidewalk on a sunny afternoon, and at the next turn, we are stuck, talking to some bore at a restaurant, who happened by our table, and feels the absolute need to tell us about his brand new radial tires.
So. There it is. That container ship got moving today. Hopefully, its predicament won’t leave us stuck without toilet paper and coffee.
Today, may you be unstuck. In every way.
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“One day I asked a wingless bird what will she do now. She replied, “If I can’t fly than I shall run. If I can’t run I shall walk. If I can’t walk I shall crawl. But I will never be stuck in cage.”
― Joyce Guo
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“Fireflies are stars that could not journey to the sky.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson
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“Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world”
— Roald Dahl
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Colossally stuck. From heads to arms to hearts.
