Spinning Plates: A Short Story
She had a dream one night that she was on a stage surrounded with spinning plates on wires, sort of something you would see on an old episode of Ed Sullivan. Her job was to keep the plates spinning, making sure that none of them hit the ground. She was running around fixing the wires constantly so the plates would keep on spinning. None of them could wobble, none of them could fall.
She was exhausted from all the running. She couldn't take it anymore, the fatigue was too great. She collapsed on the floor and blacked out.
When she awoke from her fainting, she expected to see all the plates broken on the floor, but instead she saw a man. And the plates were still spinning. The man came toward her and said, "Come now, let's go sit in the audience seats for a while." He helped her up and started guiding her to a seat.
"I can't sit down," she said, "I need to make sure the plates keep spinning. I don't want them to fall, I can't afford for them to break."
"Nonsense," the man told her, "you sit down and rest. I'll make sure they don't fall."
They sat down together in the front row of audience seats. They watched the plates spin together. Some of them wobbled a bit, which made her very nervous, but the man would lift his hands in their direction and it would become steady again.
Suddenly, they heard a loud crash from the far left of the stage. A plate had fallen to the ground, but luckily had not broken. She sprung off her seat and ran towards it. The man followed close behind. "Oh no," she said, examining the plate in her hands, "this plate's got a chip in it."
The man examined it as well. "You're right, but it's okay, the plate will still spin." They held the plate together, placed it back on the wire, and spun it.
Another crash sounded at the far right of the stage. She went running toward where the sound was and gazed upon the shattered plate in front of her. She knelt down and cried. "What am I going to do? What am I going to do? I've failed. The plate is broken. What now?"
The man started picking up the shattered pieces. "Oh well, we'll just have to glue all the pieces back together, won't we?"
"That's impossible," she replied through her tears, "even if we could pick up all the tiny little pieces, there's no way the plate could spin again. There's no point."
"Nothing is impossible." The man started to glue the pieces back together, one by one. Feeling a bit more encouraged, she helped the man with the pieces and the glue.
Soon the plate was back together. Sure, there were cracks and some chips missing, but at least it was together. "Come on now, let's see if it will spin." The man held the plate up to her and she took the other side. "Okay, on three. 1...2...3."
They spun the plate on the wire and sure enough, it kept spinning.
