The morning began as one that could go either way. After the first cup of Jah's mercy, I might feel like singing zip-a-dee-do-dah or I might feel like singing Stormy Weather. I was considering how I should begin the day when Ms. Wonder came into the kitchen looking for her cup.
"Not Southport," I said, "Brunswick Forest."
"Not Southport?" she said. "I thought you'd be chasing the film crew making that new movie. What's its name? The Problem in Providence?"
"The name is The Problem With Providence not to be confused with A Problem With Providence, which is another movie in production right now, but not in Southport. And if you want my opinion, many people are going to confuse the two movies from now until the final Big Bang, which is expected to occur, in case you haven't heard, sometime in 2025."
"Why did you change your mind, if you don't mind my asking?"
"I decided that today would be better spent chasing the Creature of the Blank Lagoon."
"Oh my God!" she said. "I thought you'd given up that looney idea of finding a lake monster. Have you forgotten the time wasted last year looking for, what did you call it, Jordie?"
"First of all," I said. "It's not a monster, it's a creature. Surely you remember Lupe's argument that it's probably a mother taking care of a brood of youngsters. And secondly, it's technically a cryptid, and cryptids are found all over the world."
"They aren't found all over the world," she said. "They're reported by people who get their kicks by making silly claims."
"Cryptids are everywhere in the space-time continuum, Poopsie. You have your Yeti in the Himalayas; Sasquatch in the Pacific rain forests; Chupacabra; Nessie; the Kraken; and what about Unicorns; Pegasus; the Minotaur?"
"You're confusing the subject again," she said. "You're mixing legend, myth, and who knows what else."
"Even here in the Carolinas we have Normie in Lake Norman," I said.
"Again," she said, "more claims that have been exaggerated. In the case of Normie, the stories are used to market the Normie Lake Tours."
"Cryptids are nothing more than creatures that naturalists consider impossible or extremely unlikely," I said. "I personally have no trouble allowing for the possibility that such creatures exist because I consider human beings to be impossible and extremely unlikely to exist."
I expected the last remark to give me the edge in the debate because I thought the crack about humans to be an excellent talking point and impossible to disprove. Is disprove the word? I expected her to be nonplussed and she didn't immediately speak but to my surprise, she gave me one of those disapproving looks.
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence and I felt compelled to continue speaking. When I have the floor, I tend to keep talking. It's usually a tactic that I later regret but somehow I can't seem to stop myself.
"Ms. Wonder," I said, "my thoughts about humans aside, I have another reason to think there may be truth in many of the stories. I found evidence of one in Lake Jordan.
You remember that surely. I never actually saw it steadily or whole, however, I uncovered plenty of evidence to satisfy me that the creature I call Jordie is real."
"Not actual evidence," she said.
"A very reliable source claimed to have seen them on several occasions," I said. "That's right; my source saw two of them; probably a breeding pair.
I realize that the nay-sayers found fault with all my evidence. They went so far as to suggest that the footprints I photographed in the mud flats were simply dog prints that had been enlarged by rain. Dog prints!
They claimed the wallows I found in the tall grass were formed by the wind. Even my photograph of her feeding in the morning fog was presumed to be a maintenance station for a gas pipeline.
A gas pipeline, Wonder! Have you ever heard anything so absurd? Well, I'm going to change all that. Remember the wallows we found on the banks of River Brunswick last summer?"
"Those were swirls caused by eddies in the tidal flow," she said.
"Swirls, my beret, Wonder! Those are bedding areas. The creatures come out at night to feed along the banks of the river. Everyone knows that! I've found more of them in the lagoons of Brunswick and there are no tidal eddies in the lagoons."
She sighed deeply and the look that crossed her face now was one of defeat. Somehow it made me feel bad winning an argument in this way. I felt that the Genome logic had overwhelmed her. I didn't like it.
"I've heard enough and I need to get back to work," she said, "but tell me honestly, you don't really believe these creatures exist, right?"
And so with that question, I realized that this was one of those situations that require looking deep into the soul and coming up with the right answer.
The universe is a mysterious master, and it's impossible to completely understand it. I looked deep and found the answer. It was my turn to sigh deeply.
"Remember that conversation we had when you asked if I was ever happy? Well, having something fun to write about each day helps to lift my mood up above the clouds to the heavenly heights where mockingbirds sing."
I paused and savored for one more moment that feeling of having faced one's detractors and come out on top.
"So what if I look for cryptids in lagoons, and mythological creatures in the sewers of my mind, or film crews on the Carolina coast? It may not always elevate me above the happy threshold but it gets me closer than I'd be otherwise."
"Ah," she said. "Thank you for your candor and with that understanding, as far as I'm concerned, you can look for lagoon creatures until your eyes bubble."
"Thank you, Poopsie," I said.
"Not at all," she said.
"Fierce Qigong, Poopsie," I said.
"Fierce Qigong," she said.