A Very Bad Crumb

“Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last week I swept the kitchen after Spouse and I cooked our usual array of dishes. Sunday evenings mean homemade bread, lentil soup, fish, meatloaf and some vegetables. With that done, the food issue for two people with extraordinary appetites is quietly settled for the remainder of the week.
I swept the floor, as I always do, and I was anxious to return to more interesting events, as I always am. I greatly enjoy the cooking process but after several hours of stirring, kneading or slicing it is a pleasure to return to our one warm room and rest with a captivating book or a fine film.
There were stray crumbs here and there, as always. They all slid subserviently into the waste basket- all but one. It flew out of the dustpan and returned to the cold tiles. I tried once more. I swept the lone crumb into the pan and held it aloft to return it to its comrades.
It did not just roll, something I could attribute to the force of gravity: I watched silently as instead it made its way, by some other power, back to the floor.
I brushed it, harder now, into the pan for the third time and for the third time it jumped out.
We battled on, I growing more livid as my precious Sunday moments were being swept away by an arrogant and rascally crumb with ambition.
I continued to sweep it up and eventually I lost count of the number of times it fought back. Spouse entered the kitchen to watch me and ensured that it was, in fact, an inanimate piece of food that was defeating me and not a beetle with magical powers or anything of that nature.
My sweeping grew fretful and careless. I was furious. Each time I succeeded in getting the item into the plastic pan I was sure I had won, but when I tried to pour it into the bin it would miss the mark entirely.
Spouse threw me off balance by remarking that "it must be a very bad crumb."
I turned to the witty one and huffed that it certainly appeared to be its mission to make my life an uphill struggle. At that moment, with me still sweeping randomly and viciously, the crumb was suddenly reposing in the pan. Its lack of movement, back-answering or looking like anything other than a piece of food left me feeling like a half-wit. I brushed the lifeless thing into the bin and went to join my Spouse in a Sunday evening film and soothe my illogical and over-sensitive mind.