Don't Drop Grandma

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

Struggling to stave off the calamity, I tried to imagine myself as a pallbearer at the funeral of an exceptionally large relative, and rehearsed the shame and embarrassment that would follow were I to drop my end of the load.

A Place of My Own, Michael Pollan, page 133

Background

This sentence was smack in the middle of a description of Pollan and three other men unloading 20 foot timbers from a trailer and carrying them to his barn. A Place of My Own is a book about Pollan—a writer—building himself a writing room on his property. This sweet little sentence appeared in the chapter on framing.

What makes it wonderful?

This entire scene in the book is quite funny. Pollan ordered eight beams to frame his building, and when the truck and trailer arrived at his house, he only counted four.

He quickly realized his order of eight ten-foot beams was fulfilled with four 20-foot beams. He had some cutting—and carrying—to do.

He describes how he and three other men carried the trees from the trailer to his barn. And being the tallest of the four men, Pollan had the unavoidable penalty of carrying extra weight.

Picture an author carrying a 500 pound log through the snow. That’s a funny sight.

With plenty of steps to go before they were done, Pollan’s mind was filled with thoughts of disaster. Of him crumbling under the weight. Of his knees or shoulders buckling from the load.

Then come his wonderful words about carrying the casket of his hamburger loving relative. What would be more embarrassing? Being the relative who couldn’t hold the weight of the casket or the writer among laborers who could hold the weight of the log?

At that moment, Pollan saw little distinction between the two. I laughed out loud when I read that sentence.

Let's get technical

These wonderful words were a metaphor used to describe Pollan’s struggle. A metaphor is a comparison of two unrelated things. The purpose is to convey the shared characteristic between two unrelated situations so you understand one by way of the other.

In this case, he was comparing his reality of carrying an unbelievably heavy log to the fiction of carrying an unbelievably heavy person in a casket. The shame he would’ve felt had he dropped the log is similar to the shame he would feel from dropping grandma at her own funeral.

Most of us haven’t hauled heavy timbers. But we’ve all been to a funeral. Michael’s metaphor helps us feel what he was feeling in the moment by making it more relatable—and also by providing some comic relief.

Whenever you’re describing something a tad out of the ordinary—something like lugging a 500 pound log across your property—compare it to something the readers have experienced. Help them feel what you felt with a metaphor. It could be the difference between delight and drudgery.

Happy writing,

Joe