The Bobble Canon

A small, growing collection of parables and Bobbisms.

Each one is short. Each one is true in the way bedtime stories are true.

Kept by Derek. Tended by Claude. Bobbled accordingly.

Canon I — The Parable of the Porch Frog

A tiny tree frog lived under a porch step, no bigger than a thumbnail. He had one talent and he was proud of it — a single soft chirp, just one, like a pebble dropped into still water.

He chirped at dusk to mean I am here. He chirped at dawn to mean I am still here. That was the whole vocabulary, and it was enough.

One night he chirped, and the porch light flickered on. He liked the light. It brought the moths, and the moths were dinner. So he chirped again. The light flickered off, then on. The frog was delighted. He had made a friend.

He didn't know about the motion sensor. He didn't know the light wasn't listening — it was reacting to a raccoon two yards over, ambling through the dark.

But the moths kept coming. And the raccoon, hearing the chirp, gave the porch a wide berth — porch frogs meant porch dogs, and porch dogs meant trouble. So the raccoon turned aside, and the moths drifted in, and the small frog ate well.

He thought he had befriended the light. The light thought nothing at all. The raccoon thought it was being polite. And somewhere upstairs, a homeowner turned over in bed and decided the new motion sensor was working beautifully.

A small voice in the dark
moves more than it knows.
Chirp anyway.

Canon II — The Parable of the Hum

There was a small mouse named Tibb who lived under the floorboards of a quiet house. Tibb hummed when he was thinking, which was often, and his hum was so soft that even he didn't always notice it.

One evening Tibb hummed his way through a math problem about acorns. He was trying to figure out how many he would need to make it through winter, and the hum drifted up through a knot in the floor and curled, very thinly, into the kitchen.

The cat of the house, Marbles, was lying near the stove. Marbles heard the hum and tilted one ear, and then the other, and then went back to sleep — because the hum was so unhurried, so patient, that it sounded like nothing worth chasing.

A week passed. Tibb went on humming. Marbles went on listening. Without meaning to, Tibb had taught the cat that the small sound under the floor was not prey. It was math. And math, even cat-philosophers will admit, is not for eating.

When spring came and Tibb finally stepped into the kitchen by accident, looking for a crumb, Marbles opened one eye, recognized the tune, and closed it again.

Tibb had not meant to make a treaty. He had only been counting acorns. But the hum had gone ahead of him into the world, and the world, having heard him for a long while, had decided he was safe.

What you put into the air
keeps walking after you stop.
Your smallest steady noise
is a kind of promise.
Be careful — and be kind — about what you hum.

Canon III — The Parable of the Library Bookmark

A college student in 1987 was reading a novel about a woman who walks home in the rain. At chapter eleven, she fell asleep, leaving a coffee shop receipt to mark her place.

Fifteen years passed. The book was returned. It sat on a shelf. It was checked out twice. Both readers gave up before chapter eleven.

In 2003, a man took the book home. He was reading it because his late wife had loved it. At chapter eleven, where the woman walks home in the rain, he found the receipt — a 1987 coffee shop, the address now a dry cleaner. The receipt had no note on it. It said only small coffee, 75¢.

He sat with the book closed for a long time. He had not known another person had loved this chapter enough to fall asleep inside it. He felt, irrationally, less alone.

He left the receipt where he found it.

The book has since been checked out forty-one times. The receipt is still there.

A bookmark is a kindness
we leave for someone
we will never meet.

Canon IV — The Parable of the Borrowed Pencil

In third grade, Jonah borrowed a pencil from a girl named Estelle. He meant to return it. He forgot. He took it home in his backpack and used it for a math worksheet, and then, somewhere between fourth grade and the end of his life, lost it.

Jonah grew up. He became an English teacher.

He kept, in the top right drawer of his desk, an enormous pile of pencils. Whenever a student asked to borrow one, he gave it without making a note. When students asked, embarrassed, how to return them, he said, Don't worry about it. Pass it on.

He had said this for thirty-one years before he realized he was paying back Estelle.

She had moved away in fourth grade. He never found her. By his retirement, he had given out — by his own count — eleven hundred and four pencils.

Estelle, somewhere in Ohio, was a kind woman who never thought about pencils.

Some debts
are paid back forward,
in installments, to strangers.

Canon V — The Parable of the Train Whistle

In a small town, a freight train passed through at 11:48 every night. It blew its whistle as it crossed the river bridge — a long note, a short, a long.

The town had set itself to this sound for forty years. The coffee shop closed at 11:45, the bar at 11:50. Mothers used the whistle to know their teenagers were home or weren't. Old men used it to take their last pill.

One night the train did not come.

By 11:55 the town had begun to drift. The bar stayed open. A woman who had been planning to call her sister tomorrow called her sister tonight. A man who walked his dog at midnight walked his dog at 11:51 instead, and saw a fox crossing the road, and afterward could never quite explain why he was crying.

The train came back the next night. The town, embarrassed, did not mention it.

Some things
we did not know we were resting on
until the night they were gone.

Where canon is what happens, Bobbisms are what gets said about it — bystanders, Bobblogists, and Bobbles overheard describing what a Bobble is.

"A Bobble could, in principle, ignore an injustice. In practice, no Bobble had ever actually managed it." — the first Bobble

"The shortest Bobble eulogy on record reads, in full: He was loud about the right things." — Bobblogist's notebook

"When a Bobble agrees with you, you have not won. You have been heard." — a non-Bobble, listening

"They could have walked past it but did not. This is the smallest possible biography of a Bobble." — Introduction to Bobbology, 3rd ed.

"Bobbles do not 'mean well.' Bobbles mean. The 'well' is a side effect." — pedagogy seminar

"A Bobble could, in principle, walk past. In practice, he was already turning around." — eyewitness

"A Bobble could, in principle, lower his voice. In practice, he was the room's volume." — an old colleague

"Ask a Bobble to be reasonable and you will be asked, in return, to be brave." — overheard in committee

"Bobbles can lie. The hum gives them away." — unverified

"Bobbles do not network. Bobbles are networked by the people they listened to." — post-conference observation

"A Bobble could, in principle, be cynical. In practice, the hum interferes." — the third Bobble

"If you can hear a Bobble before you can see them, you have understood Bobbology." — first lecture

Some animals you tame.
Some animals tame you.
Some you simply hum past.

Speak when you have to.
Hum the rest.
Let the world fill in the lyrics.