Easily Amused

I was sanding a rusty floor grate the other day, and I got to thinking about my friend Simon.

I remembered a conversation we had once about the band Cornershop. Tjinder Singh, the band's singer, is part Indian and part British, and much of the group's appeal comes from the blend of Eastern and Western influences -- a blend most obvious and literal in their Hindi version of The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood." Simon and I agreed that it was a good song to cover, since it had sitars in it already.

At that point it had occurred to me that Simon speaks Hindi, and so I asked him about the lyrics -- specifically whether the phrases "Isn't it good" and "Norwegian wood" still rhymed in Hindi. I remember him thinking on it for a second, and then his eyes lighting up.

"Yes! They do!"

I remembered being happy for Simon, and his obvious delight at a new discovery, just as I sanded through the last layer of rust. I saw a sudden streak of shiny orangish gold, and realized that the iron grate I'd bought had turned out to be copper.

*****

I was driving down the highway the other day, talking on the phone to Penny.

There was a construction site on the right. Some big project, I guessed, with dozens of orange-vested workers and dirt-crusted bulldozers, and those deep, deep cross-sections of roadway removed, showing the layers of asphalt and rebar and gravel you hope not to fall into.

Past the missing quarter-mile of pavement, up over a gentle rise, I made out the last bulldozer. When I came up on it I saw something sparkling on the lower part of it, and it turned out to be a plastic-chrome hubcap somebody had attached to one of the treads.

"Ha!" I burst out into the receiver. "You should have seen that!"

I explained to Penelope what I'd seen, and together we shared an appreciation for whichever highway worker it was who found the lost wheelcover and checked to see if it fit the bulldozer, and then we appreciated the fact that it did fit, and that I'd seen it.

*****

I drove on and thought more about my good fortune. The copper grate ended up looking really neat where I installed it, covering up a speaker I built into the floor. The metal didn't all clean up perfectly, leaving little splotches and indentations in the surface, but I call that character.

"Copper..." I thought to myself. "Who would have thought?" And it was at that point that I realized nothing else in the house at all is copper -- except one thing. The wiring. The speaker wire, in fact, running to the speaker in the floor, is made out of woven strands of copper, because it doesn't corrode, and as I drove my car past the bling-bling bulldozer and reflected on the copper wire and grate complementing each other perfectly I felt very, very lucky.

*****

These little joys don't cost anyone anything, and they probably slip by unnoticed all the time, but every so often something just *occurs* to you and makes you smile. One idea clicks into another idea, a patch of clouds drifts behind another patch and all of a sudden WHAM! Right there in front of you -- the profound and revelatory, transcendent secret of... nothing.

These discoveries are rarely life-altering. They aren't critical breakthroughs or messages from the Universe -- at least, *I* don't think of them that way. They're just funny little "Hey, Whaddya Know"s that pop up every now and again.

Still, though... it *is* something out of nothing. One plus one really is equalling three, somehow. A turn of phrase, a funny expression on a stranger, a translated Beatles song rhyming in Hindi... these tiny joys are joys all the same, and well worth keeping an eye out for.

May you have yourself one when you least expect it.