Mother Earth, make me a man

This past weekend we were treated to another weekend of weather that tipped the scales of awesomeness and spilled awesomeness all over the lab floor. The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. The grass was green and the sky was blue. Even the bugs minded their own business and stayed out of my face. I soaked in the awesomeness like a dry sponge and realized a stone-cold fact:

Mother Earth is a MILF

I want to take Earth out for a few drinks. Nothing too serious, just a couple of drinks and light conversation. We’ll just relax, be ourselves, and see where the night takes us. Playfully ribbing each other to ease the nervousness of the first encounter, we slowly lose track of the time. Before we know it, we are the last ones in the bar and the bartender’s settling up our tab. Earth offers to pay half, but I’m a classy dude and take care of the whole check.

Earth is slightly tipsy and spinning off axis from the night’s drink specials, so I flag down a cab for her and ask if I can call her again. She tells me, “I’ll just see you…around,” making an orbiting motion with upper atmosphere orbital debris. We both laugh. “Oh, Earth,” I say, “you’re such a card.” We make plans to go to the new fondue place downtown next weekend.

“Dude, she’s like…a hundred years old!” my friends joke. “Yea, dude. EASILY a hundred,” they mock.

I’d be lying if I said their jokes didn’t scare me a little. Mother Earth is up there in age. I mean, she has a MOON for christ’s sake! I hope she’s not looking for a father figure for that thing because I’m not ready to be a dad! I wouldn’t know the first thing about keeping a moon in orbit, anyway!

Like a grain of sand building up into a mountain, I let my fears get the better of me and I call off our fondue date. “We’ll get together sometime soon. I just have a lot of stuff going on right now, so my schedule’s kinda out of control,” I say. She’s heard it before, though. She got the same song and dance from Mars right before he started getting emotionless and vacant toward her. Next thing she knew, Mars showed no signs of life toward her and she was stuck raising a moon all by herself. Screw it. It’s not my problem. I’m just playing the scene. She’s better off, anyway.

But everyday, something reminds me of Mother Earth. Maybe it’s a basketball being wrestled over in the park during lunch. Maybe it’s the way the sky blends all shades of colors with the setting sun. Hell, just smelling the air reminds me of her. Every step I take, I feel like the sorry son-of-a-gun that I am for walking all over her because of my own self-doubt. My friends can joke all they want, but when you feel the way I do for someone like her, nothing else matters.

Sure there’s the age difference. But goddamit, we’re just a couple of kids in love for all I’m concerned. We have to make this work because if this ain’t love, then love hasn’t been defined yet. I run home and dial her number. For some reason, I still know it by heart. It rings once and an unfamiliar voice picks up. Immediately, I feel like a fool. Of course she met someone else! To think that I was anything but another loser in a throng of failed dates on her list was a pipe dream.

“Hello..?” the voice repeated.

I swallow my pride and press on with nothing left to lose. I explain to the man on the other end how I met Earth a few weeks ago and she changed my life. I needed to speak with her to hammer out the details of the rest of our lives together. I pulled out all the stops. I was in love.

“I’m sorry, but Earth can’t actually talk. You see, Earth is a planet. In fact, we are living on it right now. It’s under our feet. It doesn’t have a voice, so I’m not sure how I could put it on the phone. I don’t know why I would need to anyway because you’re just as close to the planet as I am because we’re both standing on it right now. I’d explain to you how the Earth is not a living object, but a large rock orbiting the sun (one of many in our solar system), but I have a feeling you’re insane and have lost your mind.”

And you know something…he was right!