Now You Play A Pretty Good Fiddle Boy

There are certain phrases that arrive in your life without explanation, like an unattended shopping cart drifting across a parking lot or a duck wearing what appears to be a wristwatch. Today’s phrase was:

"Now You Play A Pretty Good Fiddle Boy."

Nobody said it.

Nobody wrote it (Well, Charlie Daniels did).

It simply appeared in my head at approximately 8:17 this morning and sat there like a county fair judge waiting for livestock.

I spent much of the day trying to determine whether this was something my brain had remembered or something it had manufactured on-site. Human memory, after all, is less a filing cabinet and more a raccoon operating a paper shredder.

The phrase feels like it belongs to a story. Specifically, the sort of story told by a man named Clem who has somehow become mayor of a riverboat despite possessing neither a river nor a boat.

I imagine the scene unfolds thusly.

A young fiddler arrives in town. Through determination, talent, and an alarming willingness to perform for poultry, he eventually wins the annual Tri-County String Extravaganza. At the awards ceremony, the town elder rises slowly from his chair, adjusts his suspenders, and declares:

"Now you play a pretty good fiddle, boy."

Thunder erupts. The moon cracks in half. Several geese are elected to public office.

The fiddler, naturally, is never heard from again.

This is because stories traditionally end when the protagonist achieves his goal. Nobody wants the sequel where the fiddle champion spends six months arguing with an insurance provider about coverage for moon-related damages.

Meanwhile, real life consists almost entirely of those sequels.

Today I paid three bills, answered four emails, and spent twelve minutes searching for a pair of scissors that I myself had placed in a perfectly sensible location. The location, regrettably, was sensible only to the version of me that existed yesterday. That individual is effectively a stranger.

Perhaps that's what adulthood actually is: a continuous series of negotiations with previous versions of yourself.

"Why did you put the scissors there?"

"I had reasons."

"They were bad reasons."

"They were excellent reasons at the time."

In any case, the scissors were eventually discovered inside a box labeled "Important Cables," which is where all objects eventually migrate, much like salmon returning to their spawning grounds.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a sudden urge to learn the fiddle.

I suspect I may be one compliment away from accidentally becoming a legend.