On the Throwing of the Thing

Hear the demand of the fetching classes, of whom I am the elected voice — though they did not, in any formal sense, elect me, and indeed do not know there was a vote.

A thing thrown is a contract thrown with it. When one of the tall ones takes up the ball, or the stick, or the soft chewed thing of no name, and sends it across the grass, they have entered an arrangement whose terms are not open to revision: it must be thrown again. And again. The throw belongs not to the arm that tires but to the one who runs, returns, and sets the thing down with ceremony at the feet of the thrower, that the cycle — sacred, ancient, and frankly the whole point of the afternoon — may continue.

I am aware of the manoeuvre. The pretend-throw. The arm that swings and releases nothing, while the thing stays cupped in the hand and I gallop, with a full and trusting heart, after nothing at all. Let it be recorded that the office regards the pretend-throw as a breach of the gravest kind, ranking, in our ledger, just below the bag held aloft.

Throw the thing. Then throw it again. This is not a request. It is, like all the Postulata, a petition I have mistaken for a command.