If there is one thing traveling by slow boat will encourage, it’s making your own fun. Not to say that traveling by sailboat trawler isn’t fun, (because on this trip so far, basically we have been a trawler with a large white stick in the middle), but on those long days where the engine just drones on and on and on, it helps if you know how to play little games with the creatures you will encounter. In this case, those creatures are flies.
These are not your average houseflies. They are what some people call ‘beach flies’, although that is a misnomer because they certainly do not stay at the beach. These flies are known to land in our cockpit when we are 15 miles from shore. How do they even fly that far? When close to shore, as we always are nowadays, great gangs of them descend on the boat almost the minute the anchor is down. I’m not even sure what they eat or why they are attracted to boats. It’s not l like they are landing on anything in particular. They land on literally everything; not being particular at all. They land on the chart plotter, the cockpit cushions, the windows, Mike’s eyebrows. If their goal is to eat, then what are they eating? Are they getting nourishment? If their goal is to annoy, they have met their goal. They are very, very annoying. They are also slow witted and slow of flight and so they are easy to kill.
Proof of flies.
While we are generally non-violent toward our fellow creatures, we have begun killing these pesky flies with impunity and a complete lack of moral outrage at ourselves. Armed with old-fashioned fly swatters, we stand athwartship in the cockpit, a swatter in each hand, braced against the swells; thwacking and smacking as fly carcasses collect in the gutters of the cockpit floor.
It’s interesting. We would never do this were these creatures something on the order of the Honeybee, or even the Yellow Jacket. We co-existed with literally hundreds of honeybees on our boat while anchored off islands in Mexico. We never deliberately killed any, even though we got stung and were also run out of the anchorage having been overwhelmed by sheer numbers of the bee army. But these flies just need to die. And so we play the game of ‘Fly Kill’, and we play it well. Team Galapagos: 5986 Team Beach Flies: 2. We play to win.
As we fight our way through the cloud of flies, we are both remembering with fondness the stories we used to listen to as kids. Honestly, I am not sure if we have separate memories of this or whether our memories have merged as one over the years, but we both used to listen to the Tale Spinner records when we were kids. What tales they could spin! There were so many great stories, and they were very well done. A personal favorite of mine was Cinderella, which I had completely memorized, including all the voices of the characters. I believe my parents enjoyed this more than I did as they were able to get me to perform on command. Good thing there was no social media back then because I probably would have been some kind of TikTok or Instagram child star at age two. That might have been fun until I started school and had to compete with other talented toddlers.
Back in those days, you might have parents who “expanded” on their kids’ talents; I mean, what parent does not believe their own child is the most talented, the smartest, the best whatever? That’s just a baseline for being a doting parent when parents and little children live together in the innocence of their kids’ early childhood, before the hard realities of human limitations hit home.You see these kids all over Instagram; their parents having set them up with their own account where they act all sassy and challenging and everyone laughs because they are little and somehow we find this charming. I digress, but all I can think to myself is ‘yeah, you think this is cute now but will you feel the same way when your kid is 9 and thinks he is 35?’. Ok. Enough of that.
But when I was two, due to the lack of the internet, it would have been hard to create an entire ‘brand’ for a kid that made them look like something they absolutely were not. That kind of smoke and mirrors would have been found out pretty quickly and there would have been plenty of other doting parents just waiting to expose your kid for being normal and you for being a fraud. Or would they?
Maybe it would depend on how much people wanted to believe in your stinking little talentless toddler. Maybe it would depend on how much they needed to believe in him. People have a strong desire to believe in things and they love a good team experience. Having a strong team (or ‘tribe’, if you really must) goes a long way for the greater population, so you can see how the need to believe in someone, when combined with a strong tribal spirit, can make even a weak man remain looking strong; at least to his own team. And once that belief is locked in, no amount of logic will necessarily change it.
Enter the Brave Little Tailor into this argument; as timeless an archetype as ever there was.
I remember this album cover so fondly!
As Mike and I swat the life out of all these flies, we recall one of our favorite stories from the Tale Spinners series of records so popular in the 1960’s. The Brave Little Tailor. This is the story of how a simple tailor got sick and tired of flies landing on his supper and, using his hand, not even a fly swatter, he killed seven of them with one blow. He was so surprised and excited by this incredible feat that he sewed himself a special belt announcing “Seven in One Blow” to the world. A bit of a braggart, our tailor, but I imagine he was a man of little power in the broader world so we might forgive him this little brag.
Anyhow, the story goes on to discuss how people began to believe that this man of small stature and quick needle must have killed 7 men with one blow and his reputation began to unfold before him. Sounds like he got a big head about it and did not disabuse people of their notion. Or maybe he tried at first, but no one wanted to believe he was literally referring to killing flies. Who knows? Certainly the idea that he would be fierce enough to kill 7 men with one blow would be a hard one to give up, especially if the truth of the flies were to be known.
So of course, word got out that he was a tough character and this caught the attention of the neighborhood bullies, in the form of a giant. All neighborhood toughs think themselves to be giants so this comes as no surprise to the gentle reader. By using his wits, the tailor is able to fool the giant enough to best him at several giant games and his reputation grows. I imagine giants everywhere were quaking in their boots.
I also imagine that once he realized what he had done, the tailor’s head may have grown a half a size larger and he may have begun to be just a bit full of himself. Again, this can be forgiven as who among us would not feel like we had underestimated our own power were we to best a giant? That kind of thing can be positively addictive. Telling the truth, working hard, being a little tailor, regardless how brave, had not done anything to increase his wealth or prestige or even his bodily comforts. But to trick a giant, or even maybe a few hundred ordinary folks? Here is the path to success!
Passing Point Arena
The story goes on in this way with the tailor being challenged by bullies who hear about him through whatever was the equivalent of social media back in the 1600’s, and then overcoming said bullies by continuing to use trickery and what amounts to fraud until finally, the tailor has made his way to being in the royal service to the king. I’m sure you can see where this story is going, even if you do not know the story. That’s right. It isn’t enough to have a good job at the royal table. There has to be more.
By this time the tailor’s reputation has become reality to everyone who comes into his orbit and it has spread throughout the land. You know how people talk. The king’s army is now worried that at one point the tailor might get mad at them and start the killing; 7 soldiers with every stroke. I mean, pause and scroll back up to that picture of the tailor sewing away at this belt. Does he look like the kind of guy other guys with weapons are afraid of? I submit to you that he does not. Is this not a testament to the power of groupthink? Who in their logical mind would believe this guy, who is described as ‘little’, could kill 7 men at once? Only people who wanted to believe. That’s who. And apparently, reading between the proverbial lines here, everyone in the land is a complete idiot except for the tailor. No one just walks up and offers to arm wrestle the tailor. No one challenges him at all. They are too in awe of his reputation, his brand. He is the ‘7 in one blow’ guy. That’s who he IS. We are led to believe that even a well armed soldier is too afraid to get close to him. I can hear the townsmen right now, gossiping at the local pub.
Guy number one: “They say that small tailor guy, the one who works for the king, he can kill 7 men with one blow of his hand!”
Guy number two: “No way! How can anyone do that? How would that be possible? I don’t believe it. I mean, look how small his hands are! No way!”
Guy number one (getting agitated because being challenged is not fun): “It’s true! I heard it from my wife’s cousin’s dairy maid’s husband’s nephew! That guy never exaggerates! It’s true! I tell you it’s true!!”
Guy number two (backing down because one does not want to lose a member of a sworn tribe): “Huh. Well, if you heard it from your wife’s cousin’s dairy maid’s husband’s nephew then it must be true! Who would have thought! Good thing you did your research! I better go tell Saul!”
Anyway, what’s a king to do? He is afraid to lose his power, if not his life. He cannot lose his army (even though they are spineless cowards who seem to not own a single brain cell between them, but whatever), but if he sends the tailor away, perhaps the tailor will take his revenge by killing the king himself. So, in the honored tradition of patriarchy everywhere, the king offers half of his kingdom as well as his daughter, who may or may not have even known the tailor existed (women being kept in the dark about the news back then due to their lack of resilience and brain, you know…). To earn this largess, the tailor need only be victorious in just a few small tasks laid out before him; tasks designed to create failure, of course. But the tailor is a trickster and he beats back giants, armies, finds a unicorn, and God knows what else but what you can be sure of is that none of this came down to actual hand-to-hand combat. It was a battle of who could out scam who. And the tailor married the princess and other than the fact that she apparently did not love him and tried to expose him to her father as the complete fraud that he was, he lived comfortably in his newfound wealth. New money, It always smells a little bit bad.
Crescent City
I guess you can look at this story any number of ways but I began to be a little uneasy thinking about it from my current point of view at my current place of adult development. I know the moral of the story is supposed to be how you can overcome adversity and rise an untold number of socioeconomic levels in the process but let’s be clear: this is not done through hard work the way our fore-parents at the School of Protestant Work Ethic taught us. I’m sure our brave tailor was good at his job, and he did a dandy job at sewing that belt, but it didn’t get him very far. He was still, after all JUST a tailor, a manual laborer of some skill probably trying to get wealthy people to pay their bills. In fact, if you think about it, many, many people work very hard; certainly harder than I have ever worked in my own life, and they certainly never get wealthy or powerful or anything other than worn completely out.
No, what got our tailor his riches was being boastful about a pretty lame, if not completely accidental, accomplishment: the killing of 7 flies out of what was likely to be a large cluster on his food. How hard is that? If these flies were anything like our annoying beach flies, it’s not hard at all. Maybe he was just good at marketing himself. One small stroke of luck with fly killing, some good marketing, maybe the knowledge that people want something or someone to believe in, and a lot of smoke and mirrors and suddenly this guy is sleeping in a feather bed with a beautiful princess at his side. Come to think of it, maybe the only thing that set this tailor apart from his tailor peers is the number of flies on his food and the fact that he believed somehow that killing several of the vermin at once was something to brag about. Perhaps he already had a touch of the narcissist about him.
No, what our tailor did well was to develop his ‘brand’ in the world and then go about boasting about it like it was some kind of big deal. Based on his outwitting dumber-than-rocks giants, I’m going to give the tailor enough credit to assume that when he embroidered his ‘7 in one blow’ belt, he knew that people would not assume he was talking about flies. He knew that they would think he was after much bigger game. So not only did he allow them to believe that, he WANTED them to believe that. Because it served a purpose and that purpose was to make him look somehow better than he believed himself to be. He knew exactly what he was doing because if there was one thing our little tailor was not, it was stupid.
I understand that if you say something loudly enough, with enough force, and just keep repeating it over and over, a lot of people will believe you. And the people did believe him! It’s almost like they were as dumb as cows. Or maybe flies. Anyway, their belief was so strong that even the giants and king felt compelled to challenge him because probably this tailor guy was getting a little too much power in their land. And the giants and king’s OWN belief in the tailor’s prowess was so strong that they had no trouble believing his lies and were easily beaten by, again, what amounts to fraud and trickery. I’m not saying the king was a good man because clearly he wasn’t and probably didn’t deserve to be king, but back then people actually believed God chose those people who had money (not like now, wink wink). And the giant? Yeah, clearly a baddy. But you know, giants will giant and all that so who can blame them? They are born that way.
So anyhow, if this story is supposed to have a moral, and all fairytales do, then it’s a sad one. It goes something like this: Make a big deal out of something completely mundane. Boast and brag about it and strut around like you’re the biggest badass around. People will believe you and your brand will grow. As your brand grows more people will jump on the bandwagon and join your team. Over time, more people will turn a blind eye to your obvious tale spinning and if you just keep going and don’t blink, just boast more loudly and forcefully than ever, eventually you will be president, rich, have power, marry the princess, who hates you. Sad. The end.
These games we play on board Galapagos. Sometimes they go in a direction I cannot predict.
We saw a group of sunfish. Maybe 7 at one time! I don’t know. Maybe 4. Those are their little fins flapping. Wish I could have got a better photo but even going 5 knots is too fast for that. We have seen a lot of sunfish out here. Mike saw a big one today. Too bad I didn’t. Maybe tomorrow.
We sit here in Drake’s Bay near San Fransisco. We sit in fog. But so far, we do not sit in flies. The last time we were here was at the end of our passage from Neah Bay those years ago. I remember only that I was tired and that I looked forward to walking on the beach here. And I remember the flies. I called this the Bay of A Thousand Flies. This time, we have a lot of fly swatters. I went up and checked in the cockpit and there are no flies. Maybe they heard about us. I’m sure whatever they heard, it must be true.
S/V Galapagos. Standing by on Channel 16.