Have You Ever Seen A Worm Jump?

Have You Ever Seen a Worm Jump?

I was out wandering again, with no particular destination, turning
down new streets I'd never walked before, when there on the other side
of the road, a figure had stopped. And before I realised who this
figure was, it was waving at me and crossing over, calling out my
name.
"Fritz!" I exclaimed, as I recognised my acquaintance. "Why it's been
three years or more!" But Fritz wasn't interested in the usual
discussion of our last meeting. In fact, his face told me he had
something quite different on his mind.
"I have been trying to find..." He broke off. "I've been looking for
someone to tell... Oh it's good to see you," he said, for one moment,
the anxiety vanishing from his expression.
There was a silence then, and a large van drove by at pace. We stepped
in towards the buildings. I waited for his information. Bundled up in a
big black coat, he pulled up his collars and looked from side to
side.
"Have you ever seen a worm jump?" He asked, his voice quiet, but full
of expectation.
Another silence, and then I answered, "No Fritz... I must admit I
haven't..." I was just about to sman prematurely, expecting a punch
line of some sort, when he grabbed both my shoulders and said, "I have!
I've seen it! Today I've seen it! I've been to the bakery, they've
never seen it. And I've been to the bookies, they've never seen it. No
one has ever seen a worm jump... until today... I have seen it!"
Of course I wasn't sure how to react. It was true that Fritz led an
excitable sort of existence, up one minute and down the next. He had
always been this way. I, on the other hand, am a milder sort of person.
I can't shout about silly things in life.
"The reason why no one has ever seen a worm jump," I said, looking
past Fritz and down beyond the parked cars, "is because quite simply -
worms don't jump! They can't, it's impossible. It's just not within a
worm's capability to jump... You must have been mistaken." All the
while, as I was speaking, Fritz was shaking his head from side to side,
vigorously and with gathering speed. This irritated me.
"No," he said flatly. "I'm not mistaken. I've seen it... today."
I really had no inclination to hear his stupid story, he was obviously
not going to listen to logic. But he was preparing to tell it to me
anyway, his eyes were bright and his mouth wide and fluttering.
"There was a worm in my bathroom..." he explained. "It was crawling
along the gap in the tiles, and as I brushed my teeth I noticed
something moving, a line of worm sliding along towards the toothpaste
tube."
"So it was sliding," I said, "not jumping."
"Wait!" He said, one finger pointing. "It probably wouldn't have
jumped, but I touched it... just to see what would happen. And the
whole thing - head, end... The whole worm just jumped straight into the
air... right in front of my eyes!"
I was half tempted to ask him what in hell's name a worm was doing in
his bathroom in the first place, but I thought this would only excite
him further, and lead him to think that I actually believed him.
"A worm is not physically capable..." I went on... "of making a jump.
It doesn't have the mechanisms to propel itself upwards... to lift
itself up in that type of motion." I could have continued. Well, at
least there was substance to what I was saying. But again, Fritz was
shaking his head and dismissing me.
"I know what I saw," he said, in a louder tone than before. He rubbed
at his forehead and looked upwards as if trying to recall the moment.
"It flipped I tell you, as a dolphin might, with grace, with
style."
Now this was too much. For Fritz to claim that he witnessed a worm
jump was one thing. But to suggest that it was somehow an intentional
act, showing dexterity, beauty even, well, I felt like laughing in his
face! "Worms don't jump," I insisted. And to assert my point further, I
breathed in sharply and said, "I can prove it."
Fritz, who still had that ridiculous wild look in his face, stopped
fidgeting and focused on me. "Prove it?" He asked.
"Yes, prove it," I said strangely, in a voice I didn't recognise.
"Let's walk to the library. We'll find a book on worms and we'll prove
whether they can jump or not..." I was enjoying the word prove. It gave
me a sense of solid satisfaction, as Fritz agreed to my suggestion and
we began to walk briskly towards the town.
We said very little to each other during that short walk. After all,
we had talked of nothing but the worm since our greeting, and now there
seemed little point in communicating until the moment when we would
both have the relevant page of the relevant book open before our
eyes.
I approached the librarian in a manner which was more confident than
my usual style, and asked her where we might find a general information
book on worms. She scrunched up her face without pausing from what she
was writing, and suggested we try the encyclopaedia.
"W... W..." I mumbled, as I ran a finger along the row of thick green
encyclopaedias. "But wait," I said. "You haven't told me what kind of
worm it was." I looked to Fritz for a response, but he only shuffled
uncomfortably and pushed his hands further into his coat pockets.
"A worm is a worm," he said.
In that case, I thought, I'll simply look under 'worm', and within a
minute or so, I had the correct entry at hand. I began to skim read,
speaking out a few rushed sentences here and there; "...living
underground they are a valuable asset to the soil...
bleurdibleurdibleur... A worm can be cut in two... bleurdibleur..."
Fritz was agitated. "Ah here we are!" I said happily, as loudly as was
really acceptable in a library. And I pointed plainly to three words
which stood out like neon lights on the paper; 'Worms cannot
jump.'
"Worms cannot jump. Worms cannot jump," I repeated. It was a glorious
moment. And after some seconds of staring and stabbing at those words,
looking up at Fritz and back down at the page again, I slammed the book
shut and replaced it on the shelf.
Fritz was quiet. His head was down and his body hunched. I waited. And
I waited still longer as we moved into the noisy library entrance hall.
Finally he spoke, and with the tone of an annoying child. "Then I've
seen something truly amazing today," he said. With that one sentence,
my victory was snatched away from me in an agonising instant, and
before I had time to snap back at him, he was wandering over to a girl
by the newspaper racks, calling out and waving. The girl looked up and
smiled at him politely.
Aggravated and surprised by Fritz's sudden departure, and fuming from
his parting statement, I turned away and pulled my jacket tightly
around my chest. As I reached the exit, I heard behind me the sound of
Fritz's voice;
"Have you ever seen a worm jump?"