The Curse of the Hippo

There is, my friend Scarfalonius told me, nothing wrong with a good wallow.

We all have them on occasion. Then we crawl up out of the muck and participate in life until something brings us down and we go wallow again.

And hippos wallow. Scarfalonius pointed out that hippos wallow all the time. They kind of cut out the middle-man, the part where they hang around acting normal and become depressed. They just wallow to wallow, not to get over something. They enjoy wallowing. Maybe they have it right.

H.M. and I had the Curse of the Hippo ever since the hippo chased us on the banks of the Nile. The Curse of the Hippo made him act like a renegade-bachelor-elephant and made me wallow like a hippo for four months.

But the Luck-of-Luc seems to have broken the hippo's hold for the new year. Luc the French-Bavarian (an old friend of Herr Marlboro's) did some strange e-mail time-traveling last night, reaching back from 2006 into the past (through a miracle of time zones) and coincidentally reminded me of the fun I had at Murchison Falls at exactly the moment I was e-mailing him a happy new year note. This wouldn't be so odd if we e-mailed all the time... but we haven't changed e-mails in months and it was 4:50 a.m. in Munich.

His good wishes seem to have worked. I woke up in a decent mood for a change. Took Murphy into the backyard in my pajamas. (I was in my pajamas, not Murphy.) And realized I wasn't wallowing anymore. I actually felt--gasp--optimistic.

Merci Luc for lifting the Curse of the Hippo. Now if you could just go do that to your old friend as well...