A man by definition only

Peter had been listening to the millwrights tell stories like this for the last 15 years.

Sure, specific millwrights retired, left to work at other mills, new ones were hired, but their persistent awe over supernatural events endured.

If Pete had mustered the will to think about it, he'd have realized that he and Donnie were the two most senior employees sitting around the lunch table at that moment, and that there wasn't a single millwright other than Donnie who remained from when Peter had begun working there. It seemed to Peter that these millwrights had always been there and would always be there. This wasn't some commentary on Peter's part about how attitudes and sentiments often become worn into the walls of a building; he just quite simply never gave the millwrights much consideration as individuals. To him, they were a permanent fixture, called "Millwrights", not a group of individual millwrights as such.

Peter had stopped arguing with the Millwrights long ago. In fact, he hadn't argued with anyone in a very long time. Other people considered him to be an extremely agreeable person. The truth was, Peter was basically a piece of human dandelion fluff. Floating along on the currents of others' opinions until another current came along and carried him off in a different direction, he differed from our metaphorical piece of fluff in that eventually the fluff must settle and take root. Peter just kept floating, as if immune to the effects of metaphorical gravity.

He took a bite of his egg salad sandwich, slowly chewing it into a saliva, white bread and egg salad admixture. He added a little grape juice to the sandwich paste in an unconscious attempt to loosen its grip on the roof of his mouth. If he had stopped to think about it, he would have realized that he'd been eating egg salad sandwiches for lunch every single day for 15 years. It didn't occur to him whether he liked egg salad or not.

"Call it a ladder or a pyramid or whatever man, you can call getting fucked in the arse a goddamn flower but you're still gonna be fuckin' bleedin' out the ass! Haha har!" A pulse of sudden laughter startled Peter. Even Ryan laughed enthusiastically.

Eyes focused intently on the clock, waiting for 12:30 to arrive, Peter's mind was a prism. Stimuli would enter and rattle around, maybe trigger a few synapses sparking unwilled, atrophied memories, and then escape. The memories would then settle down into the dust, unexamined. As he watched the second hand trace its path around the circle, he tried to think of something to say but couldn't. Instead, he swallowed the thoroughly chewed bite of sandwich and took a deep breath. If anyone was paying attention, it would have sounded like a sigh.

He used to find the millwrights' conversations silly.

Like most people, he considered himself a spiritual person, if not particularly religious. In fact, he didn't subscribe to any particular religious ideology, but for some reason, he was convinced something was out there. At least he thought he was convinced of that.

Once he had come to the hazy conclusion that there was "something out there", he just kind of stopped thinking about his spirituality, and it immediately coalesced into a solid ball and precipitated out of the solution of his thoughts. Now, it existed somewhere at the base of his mind, a stalagmite rising out of the depths upon which he could occasionally (when absolutely necessary) prick his finger and quickly explain the feeling of it's salty sting.

Fortunately, most people were not particularly interested in probing the depths of their own spirituality, let alone his, which prevented him from having to bring his full weight to bear on its pointy cone, which would entail either impaling himself on its calcified inadequacy or crushing it underfoot.

So, the last time he thought about it he was spiritual not religious, but all these conversations about ghosts and herbal remedies and African Shamans and whatever? Those he had long ago filed away under "foolish superstition", and he placed a note on the file that said, "Do not trust millwrights about anything other than purely technical issues." He had to concede that the millwrights had an intimate physical knowledge of all things technical, even if they couldn't explain it in scientific terms. He'd been operating under these conditions without issue for approximately twelve years.

When he was younger, he was jealous of the millwrights' camaraderie. It reminded him of his days in University; the engineers were a similarly fraternal group. Each year they would haze the freshmen students, thus permanently stamping them as part of the fraternity.


We are we are we are we are we are the Engineers/
We can we can we can we can we can drink forty beers...


was as much of the hazing song as Peter could recall. The freshmen would have their whole bodies died fluorescent red and the seniors would get them drunk and parade them around the school in their underwear. It was a great way to bond with your classmates and the incoming students.

At least that's what Peter had come to believe by the time he graduated. Were he to think back a little further, he'd remember the sweaty humiliation he felt as a shy freshman, intimidated by the smiling men who were forcing him into a tub of dye. He would remember how he repeatedly vomited from being forced to drink so much, only to be forced to drink more. He would have remembered the laughter that seemed so much like scorn and derision; like captors gloating about the power they held over their prisoners. He would remember how he missed the entire week of classes after that, confining himself to his room out of mortification.

It was a shame his alma mater had disallowed the ritual.
Tradition is important.

But our stance on things often depends on when in our history we experience them, and time has a way of washing out the vibrant fluorescent reds of embarrassment into rosy pinks. The perceived scorn in a laugh gets transmuted to euphoric support. Forcible consumption of near-poisonous amounts of alcohol becomes the best night of your life.

The fire of youth gradually burns more slowly until, as in Peter's case, it is all but extinguished. Although, it was not as if Peter's life had ever been a five alarm warehouse fire. At most, it was more akin to an amateurish, poplar-fed camp fire. More smoke than flame. A source of annoyance, not comfort. Begging to be put out.