“I wasn’t even a year old when I climbed my first mountain.”
“Ok, I hear you calling bullshit, but hear me out. Amidst the chaos of a busy, child-filled home, I was standing and just staring at the sofa, totally transfixed. Nothing could shake my gaze. Trust me, I’ve seen the video footage. So, after a few minutes, I placed my hand on the cushion. Then, a foot. After that was a long struggle to get the rest of my body up, but gosh darn it, I did it. But that wasn’t good enough.”
“You see, that sofa had a back to it, as sofas have. It isn’t just a wide stool. So I stepped on the arm and tried to repeat my previous feat – much to the concern of my momma. Dad was like ‘let her learn, if she falls, she falls’. That didn’t happen. I got atop that son of a bitch, and as far as my lil developing peabrain was concerned, I climbed to the top of the world. That was the start of something beautiful.”
“Fast forward, Olympus, present day. I’ve climbed the best ‘sofas’ mother nature has had to offer, depending on your metric. Highest peak? Biggest base-to apex trek? Most hazardous conditions? I done’em all… And now there’s nothing. I could be sad about it, or I could look for my next mountain. How, you ask? If it doesn’t exist, make it.”
“I am but a girl. Give me a shovel and I can make a mound, but nothing more. Now is the time to conquer… A giant. A giant who can sunder the very ground we stand on as he walks, who can cause such seismic activity that I get what I want – A new challenge, freshly emergent from the planet’s crust. But first, one more climb. A challenge I have never faced before, where instead of digging a spike into ice and rock, it is in to skin and flesh. Something that has will, something that does not want to be defeated, something who will thrash and shake and try to throw me off like some bizarre vertical rodeo, but I will rise. I will perch myself atop his shoulder, and whisper my will into his ear, and if he doesn’t do what I say I’ll pull his fucking hair out.”
“And that, ladies and gents, will open up a new world of opportunity. I will see a brand new horizon, above the clouds, to shape to a new design, to present challenges until the day I eventually fall off that sofa and I learn that lesson my dad wanted me to learn all those years ago. Until then, I shall keep climbing. I will scratch claw, grasp, hang on, pull myself up and rise above, just as I have always done. And worse come to worst… I’ll have a pet giant to play with.”
“That sounds like a pretty freakin’ sweet gig to me.”