Please read the Legal Disclaimer.

THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SWEET DEBBIE

I’ve always believed that the adepts of Eastern thought were on to something: that as Mothership Earth soars through the ages the transmigration of one’s divine spirit into another physical incarnation is indeed fact. It’s certainly a consoling doctrine to embrace, provided one’s karmic ledger isn’t in arrears.

While paddling down a river, I’ve always enjoyed leaving my craft and dawdling about on the large boulders that bulge pachyderm-like from the riverbed, and sometimes I’ll even seek a respite upon the shorebound bedrock that defines a river’s course. A sunny day will often find me basking like a chilly reptile upon those smooth backs and enjoying the mesmeric and soothing shiss of the nearby cadent waters. It’s during such times that my thoughts often drift…wander…into the musings of reincarnation, a canon that asserts we are constantly in a state of evolution (or regression) as we hitch serial rides upon the colorful mandellas that spin along this plane we call earth.

Recently one bright day found me relaxing bellydown in the contours of a favorite river boulder, my daydreams only occasionally being interrupted by the distant sound of passing vehicles on the road above. And there upon that rock it came to me that since I spend so much time on the river and often use this byway to access those riparian haunts I so love, it would only be fitting if my own transmigration from a lower species into a more evolved one would result in my coming back one day as a…turtle!

Suddenly these turtle thoughts vanished as an upstream fuzzy glint of sunlight--quite apart from the bejeweled river--caught my eye. Awake now and sitting upright, I watched as a small vessel bobbed down through a train of waves and dropped purposely into a pour-over just above me. Squinting (as if that could somehow give me telescopic vision), I saw the visage of a young girl; her red locks flowing like some strange amalgam of fire and water from underneath her headpiece. I watched in awe as she back-blasted the curtain of water momentarily, stern-flipped, rolled, and spun into a perfect front-blast. As she began to cartwheel, I chuckled to myself and thought of a fitting name for what I saw: sweet roto-dendron. I could barely make out her name emblazoned white against red on her gear: something Debbie. Perhaps it was a double first name, after all this was the South. It appeared to be Leela Debbie, Lily Debbie, or something like that. She worked her way out of the pour-over and rode up a steep wave, catching its frothy top then dizzily flat-spinning down its glassy face and back into the pour-over. Her moves were so fluid and effortless that I knew I was witnessing what we whitewater paddlers seek: that elusive oneness with the river where our very moves interpret the flow, where we become that fingertip that glides over the amnic Braille beneath.

“Hoo Ya! Hoo Ya!” sounded a discordant voice from upstream, instantly transforming my reverie into reveille. I looked up to see the familiar figure of Annis as he paddled freakishly down the river. Annis is a fixture on this river; everyone knows him. Some even call him River Annis. He’s generally good natured but a bit of a lout and somewhat obnoxious (I’ve always figured that much of his adult personality stems from a subconscious attempt to overcome the teasing that resulted from the mispronunciation of his name when he was younger). I watched as Annis crashed over the ledge and almost ran over Debbie. She just smiled and continued to surf, ignoring the intrusion. So sweet, so forgiving.

“Jee-zuss, man! Watch out!” I complained as he slammed into my rock and sent a cold splash over me.

“Whoooo Weeee! You should’ve seen it!” he exclaimed. “A delivery truck straightened out Dead Man’s Curve and crashed into the river! I was there—saw it all! The driver made it out okay but dumped his load of cakes and cookies into the river! Manna from Heaven everywhere, I’m telling ya! Apple Flips, Banana Twins, Figaroos, and Zebra Cakes!” He popped his sprayskirt to show me the colorful booty he’d collected from the eddies and pools above. “Hot-damn, lookie here,” he said as he leaned over and snatched my little friend from the small hydraulic nearby. “A Double Decker Oatmeal Crème Pie! My favorite!” he proclaimed. “Wait! Wait!” I shouted. But it was too late. Annis had already ripped through her blue plaid blouse and dug into the tan sweetness beneath. I watched helplessly as my Little Debbie disappeared into his mouth in two porcine chomps. With a whistling suck and a sweep of his fat tongue her final remains disappeared from the corners of his mouth and she was no more.

But it’s comforting to know that Little Debbie will still ride the waves and surf the holes, although certainly not as gracefully as she once did. You see, she’ll now be at one with Annis--perhaps as a molecule in a strand of his hair or a tiny bit of fingernail (or maybe as a small fold in the shadows of his malaprop)--for such will be in keeping with one interpretation of reincarnation, at least in my mind.

A note of explanation: Little Debbies are snack cakes that can be found in almost any convenience store in the Southeast. The logo appears on many of the cellophane wraps and can be seen at:

http://www.littledebbie.com/

I’m partial to the Oatmeal Crème Pies, myself…with a pint of sweet milk to assist in the washdown, of course.





Return to previous page