Matchstick Man Ponders the Moon

Now Matchstick Man isn’t the sort to go around looking up at the sky, as with a head that large and a neck that small it’s somewhat of an uncomfortable experience. But lately he has been cricking his neck on a more regular basis to ponder that nightly enigma, the moon.

Matchstick Man has something of a strange relationship with the moon. He wonders about it, how it hangs there so large and bright and circular. Particularly the hanging bit, I mean, how does it do it? It doesn’t appear to have legs, at least not unless they’re incredibly long and invisible. He could see no signs of bluetack, or sticky tape, or pins, or anything. Yes, the moon was a mystery, and Matchstick Man was determined to solve it.

Take this, for example. After much close observation Matchstick Man made a startling discovery: the moon moves. At first he thought he was getting confused or mixed up, so he got a friend to take some photographs and they proved it:

sometimes the moon is to the right, and sometimes it is to the left. Matchstick Man wondered why this was so he asked a few people about it, and these were the answers that he got:

1. no idea (this was the most common answer)
2. the moon was a paper cut out, another world much like this one moving in a very precise circular orbit…( Matchstick Man lost the thread at this point. He had great respect for Professor Pipette but sometimes he didn’t half drone on, and on, and on.)
3. because the moon was a slice of lemon hanging in the sky, and, being as it was still juicy, it slipped about a bit.
4. because the Creator deemed it so

all interesting theories. Matchstick Man considered them in some detail.

Theory 1

This didn’t take much pondering. Matchstick Man understood this theory, but on reflection he didn’t really think it advanced his knowledge much. ‘No idea’, after all, isn’t much of an answer to any kind of question, and in fact he did wonder if sometimes it would be better just to say nothing at all.

Theory 2

Matchstick Man endured a very long lecture from Professor Pipette concerning the mechanics of the moon and its orbit. He thinks he might even have fallen asleep at one point. To be honest, this theory could be true, but Matchstick Man didn’t have the brainpower or the will power to follow it. On the other hand Professor Pipette was known for his rather ‘off the wall’ theories, which had gotten him into some trouble in the past, and he continued to espouse them even though he had been threatened with a public ripping, which was, to Matchstick Man’s view, a sure sign of madness. Quite frankly he didn’t know what to make of it, but even trying made his head hurt, so he gave up on this theory.

Theory 3

Matchstick Man wasn’t sure that the moon really was a slice of lemon. If so, wouldn’t it rain lemon juice at night? Wouldn’t the moon be vivid yellow, with a rind and segments? Wouldn’t night time smell a bit on the sour side? No, on reflection he thought this was a ridiculous theory, but a surprising number of the paper population seemed to think it was the truth (33% to be precise).

Theory 4

More people believed in the Creator than believed that the moon was a slice of lemon floating in the great cocktail in the sky. Matchstick Man didn’t know if he believed in the Creator or not, after all he had never seen the great Creator, had not had contact with the mystical Pencil, and had little experience of the Eraser, though he knew that once Erased a person would never be seen again and great sadness ensued. It was possible, he thought, that the Creator existed, but if so he thought that perhaps the Creator, being all-knowing, would probably set up some precise rules for the actions of the moon (perhaps those that Professor Pipette had tried to explain). This created something of a conundrum. Was it possible that if there was a Creator, then Professor Pipette wasn’t mad at all, and in fact his theory was true? Matchstick Man tried to discuss this possibility with a number of others but found that suggesting that the existence of the Creator was consistent with the mad theories of Professor Pipette tended to send people into some kind of hysteria, so he gave up on that one.

Matchstick Man was stuck.

So he decided that the only way to really find out the truth about the moon was to climb up there and find out first hand what it was. He waited until a cold, clear night, and with the largest ladder he could find he attempted to climb up to the moon.

Well, you can imagine what happened can’t you? For a start the ladder, though long, wasn’t nearly long enough to reach the moon. But this didn’t put him off. No, if he could anchor the ladder close enough, he figured he could jump the rest of the way. He saw a suitable tree, leaned the ladder against it, climbed to the top, took and deep breath and…jumped!

Then promptly hit the ground with a bump! Not so easily defeated he tried again…and fell to the ground again. Again and again he tried, and again and again he fell, with increasingly heavy bumps, to the ground. Sore and confused Matchstick Man sat sadly gazing up at the moon. The moon gazed back. He was too tired to even shake a fist at it, and instead he thought about all the time he had spent trying to find out about the moon, only to find it gazing implacably back at him, unchanged and unknowing, and he wondered, did it matter? If he were to find out the nature of the moon would it change the moon in any way, or would the moon remain the same? And would it change him in any way or would he remain the same?

Matchstick Man thought this was a question worth pondering, so he picked himself up, bid goodnight to the moon, and ambled away in the direction of the pub, companionship and conversation.