It must be odd being a duck. Because, as everyone knows, while ducks appear, to the casual riverside observer, to glide smoothly and effortlessly through the water, if you were to watch them from beneath, you’d see a couple of clumsy webbed feet flapping about in a mad panic.
Which makes me wonder. Do ducks realise that other ducks have the same problems getting through the water as they do? Or do they look at the other ducks and think, ‘Blimey. All the other ducks seem to find this swimming lark really easy. Maybe I’m the only one who has to really work at it?’
Maybe all ducks feel that way. Maybe they all have inferiority complexes, that they are the only duck in the world that finds it difficult to go upstream? Maybe they quietly quack themselves to sleep at night, hoping that tomrorrow will be the day when they find the whole having-to-be-a-duck business as simple as all the other ducks make it appear?
You could probably spot my point when it was a mile off. It’s fast approaching, it’s getting closer, and now here it is; it’s also what it’s like being a human. In a way, aren’t we all ducks, secretly, deep down? Everyone trying really hard to make their exertions look as effortless as everyone else’s? Aren’t all of us trying to hide our clumsy, flapping webbed feet, desperately struggling to give the impression that we’re gliding along without a care in the world?
Or is it just me?
Okay. It is just me.
Quack.
