I’m grateful for a gray quilted sky on a cold morning. I’m grateful for feeling still when everything else is moving. I’m grateful for other people’s gratitude lists. I’m grateful for the way Mozart sounds early in the morning, with coffee. I’m grateful to be sober today.
The One Thousand Deaths of Wile E. Coyote
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act II, scene ii
I’ve waited a long time to write these words:
Wile E. Coyote is my spirit animal.
I say that without shame or reservation.1 I can’t tell you exactly when WEC and I first crossed paths. According to Wikipedia, The Road Runner Show debuted in 1966 and was merged into the hour-long Bugs Bunny Show in 1968 or so. I know that it was broadcast on WMT out of Cedar Rapids at 7am on Saturday mornings.
Here was my magical Saturday morning routine back then. I would finish delivering my papers at 6:30. I could cut through the Doerrman’s yard and behind Mr. Eden’s garage and I was home. I’d ditch the yellow Des Moines Register bag, grab my collection bag with the cash I had collected during the week, hop on my bike (a yellow Schwinn 3-speed Sting Ray with the chrome shifter and yellow glittery banana seat) and head off to Mr. Gillespie’s house—the district manager for the Des Moines Register. I paid my bill (the wholesale rate for 37 daily newspapers and 44 on Sundays), what was left over in the bag belonged to me!2 Lightning fast trip down Koser Ave to Lausen’s Grocery Store, surgical strike to obtain candy, not really time to catch up with Mrs. Lausen because I’m hustling to get home by 7:00 am, and I know the reason the trip down Koser Avenue was so fast is because it was “down” Koser Avenue. The trip home was all uphill. No matter, bag of candy stuffed in my shirt (you can’t have a basket on a Sting Ray), downshift to first gear and I’m home just in time for the beginning of the Bugs Bunny Hour. I liked Bugs Bunny; I loved Wile E. Coyote from the very first.
Why did I, do I, love the coyote so much? I think there are lots of points of identification, and say what you will, the coyote left it all on the floor every single time. In doing research for this,3 I compiled a partial list of the running gag, fake latin names for WEC and the RoadRunner:
You see the kind of unfair theme emerging. The coyote is nothing but a product of his character defects. To me, the Coyote was not some mangy, hare-brained, pseudo-dog. I was more in tune with his original incarnation, think “Quixote,” not “Coyote.” Wile E. Coyote was:
Resourceful
Innovative
Persistent
Urbane
Ironic
Witty
Stubborn
Capable of moments of great self-awareness (typically right before falling began)
Willing to endure repeated and escalating humiliations
Completely deluded and somewhat insane
Doomed
I loved Wile E. Coyote and his tragic, never ending, doomed-to-failure quest.
I had been trying to get sober for a few years and someone insightfully gave me a gift of Road Runner DVD’s.4 I was watching them one evening, laughing out loud at the same spots I laughed at in 1973, and realized WEC was a lot like me. Everything WEC tried to catch the Road Runner ended not just in failure, but in abject disaster and severe personal injury. Everything I tried to get sober, to stop drinking, somehow managed to end in a place that was worse than where it began. Unpersuaded by the more prosaic, "traditional" methods other people might use to catch their personal Road Runners, I thought attaching a rocket was a better answer:
We all know how that turned out. I mean, there were variations; sometimes the rocket just hit something solid and blew up, sometimes it would hit a canyon wall that would fling WEC all the way into space; the one thing that never happened? Well, he almost never caught the Road Runner.
Chuck Jones, the brilliant animator who conceived of this most clever depiction of the banality and inevitability of repeated failure in the modern world, actually had “Rules” for Wile E. Coyote:
The only Rule that really mattered was Number Three: “The Coyote could stop anytime—if he were not a fanatic.” And then, the killer quote from George Santayana:
A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.
That was me. I was so lost in what I thought I was supposed to be doing, what I was doing, who I was supposed to be to myself, to all of these other people in my life, what I was supposed to do. I had no chance of finding myself, much less finding a way out. Every time I was cornered and had to try and get sober again, well, if the last rocket thing didn’t work, maybe it’s time for a different rocket?
You get the idea. I tried thing after thing to try and get sober and none of it worked, until I did the thing that I had kind of refused to do all along. Until I was willing to see things differently and until I was able to see what my target actually needed to be. Until then, well, let’s just say that I was very well-acquainted with the feeling of clinging to the underside of a boulder. I knew exactly what that fading, whistling noise meant; the ground was coming up fast. And also, there was probably another rock coming down above me.
You think I’m going to leave you there? Tied up to the railroad tracks of fate with no hope of escape or recovery?5 Of course not, I will see you tomorrow, complete with the teachings of Wile E. Coyote, so that his his thousands of deaths shall not have been in vain. I will leave you with one nugget divined from the many deaths of the Furry Tantalus of the Southwest:
Never, ever check the fuse after you’ve lit it.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
Matthew McConaughey may be my human spirit guide and I say that far more reservedly.
To those customers who “weren’t home” on Tuesday nights or didn’t answer the doorbell, I still had to pay my bill on Saturday. You were stiffing a 10 year old paper boy who got up every morning at 5:30 am to deliver your newspaper. Also, to those who wanted change back for the $2 they gave me —for their weekly bill of $1.65 —well, I hope that score got settled somewhere, somehow.
Yeah, there was quite a bit of research.
We still had those and yes, it rankles a bit to call it the Road Runner Show, but that is what it was called.
That’s actually more of a Dudley Do-Right type of thing.
Brilliant!!! Love WEC!!
Such a brilliant post - I love the comparisons you've drawn here. Wonderful writing.
I'm going to think of your 'gray quilted sky' when I go out for a walk later - when I last looked out of the window I thought 'ugh, it's dark and grey and flat out there', but having read the very first line of this post I'm feeling much more benevolent towards the sky. Thank you.