The Mop, Flopped

 I’ve gotta be honest with you: I hate the fairy tale cliché of “and they lived happily ever after.”

Really? Did they, though?

Sure, the dragon was slain and the destined king or queen anointed, but you’re telling me the royal couple never had a single fight over the kingdom’s finances? Never once got mad at their partner for forcing them to attend the prince’s royal PTA meetings? Never got sick, worried about retirement, or lost a close friend?

Okay, bad example. Most of us aren’t royalty. (At least, that we know of. I’m still optimistic.)

This is one reason I love Stephen King’s novels. When I was younger and more naive, I used to say he was a great spinner of yarns, but terrible at ending his tales. As I’ve gotten older, I understand that no, you don’t always defeat the monster. Not every mystery is explained. Sometimes, all you can do is survive—the story ends, the reader moves on to another selection, but your scars endure.

Trauma continues beyond the story’s end.

Now, if you'll indulge me, I’d like to talk briefly about Star Trek. (Minor spoilers for this season of Picard in the following paragraph.) Although we spent several years in the 90s watching Seven of Nine regain her humanity on Voyager, this week we learned that—despite Janeway putting her own career on the line on behalf of her friend—Seven was never accepted into Starfleet. She has been dealing with distrust and discrimination over her history with the Borg ever since her return. Voyager found its way home, everyone cheered, the credits rolled, and…

…it was not happily ever after after all. 

Some Trek purists have been angry at the show, complaining (among other things) that the characters aren’t the ones they remember. 

Remember the outcry over Luke Skywalker? He helped his father defeat the Emperor; he was a hero, for Force’s sake! True, but then he endured failure after failure: rejection by his first student, his own nephew turning to the dark side, a loss of faith in the Jedi teachings themselves.

He was never any less a hero for all of that, but he was still an imperfect person doing his best. His story went on, and it wasn’t always smooth sailing. 

While we’re talking about bothersome story tropes, another is “character overcomes extreme adversity to achieve Particular Thing, then magically never has any difficulty with Particular Thing ever again for the rest of their days.” (I can’t tell you how many tests I studied hard for back in the day that I couldn’t pass now to save my life, but I digress.)

Yes, characters are fictional, to be done with as the writer pleases. Sure, we can say that everything was perfectly hunky-dory from that moment on and call it a day. All was happiness and rainbows and adorable unicorn-kitten hybrids, forever. Aww.

But if fairy tales are lessons to reflect life, it isn’t fair to the audience—whether it’s children or adults—to lie to them.

Life is neither good nor bad; it is how one perceives one’s own existence that offers the ultimate—admittedly biased—judgment on the matter. You and I will struggle and will continue to struggle our entire lives. We’ll make plenty of mistakes; don’t worry about that. (It is best to own up to them, forgive yourself and/or others, and move on.)

When I was growing up, mom had a saying: “That’s how the mop flops.” At the time, I had no idea how much wisdom a mop (or the gravitational pull of Earth upon said cleaning accessory) had to teach me.

Life: It’s harsh and glorious and painful and rewarding and will always be as long as there is a story to tell.

Ah, but what a story!

We will always be retrieving flopped mops. Them’s the facts. The best we can hope for, really, is that at least our mops will be interesting.