destino

From the time he was about 4 years old he knew he wanted to make at least middle management at a q-tip factory. He had watched with rapt attention as his mother gently tore open a brand new box of q-tips, extricated one of the swabs, and swirled it around his little sister’s ear. The snow white cotton balloon morphed into an irregular cerumen blob that looked a lot like the cowlick on the back of dennis the menace’s head. he was enthralled by the neat little rows and stacks of swabs in the package, all lined up perfectly like little soldiers. he admired the harmony, the sense of uniformity and perfection. it was not unlike the feeling he got when his grandmother opened a can of sardines for breakfast. that sense of uniformity and perfection symbolized all that was right with the world for him. when he visualized utopia, he visualized millions and millions of swabs running through miles of machinery being tumbled, sorted, stacked, layered and ultimately hermetically sealed in plastic packages to be distributed worldwide, but not before he could go down to shipping and stand among them like a dwarf in times square with skyscrapers of swabs towering over him.