A Myth That Explains A Common Natural Occurrence [FICTOID]

There’s a dam around the bend behind the river mouth, and when you go to the old coders’ bar, you can hear some claim to have been there when it was built, the damned old liars.

“He did it because he loved her,” they say.  “But she rejected him until finally all that heartache had nowhere to go and instead of keeping it cooped up inside him, he just let it flow out.

“As punishment, the gods of the river kept him locked up in a heavenly warehouse, and only when he filled the warehouse to the brim with barrels of his tears would they let them flow out.

“That’s why they built the dam:  To hold the tears back.”

If you tell them you find that story highly dubious, they just frown and scowl at you and ask, “What was your name again?”

Then they ignore you and shift the topic to other things.

The dam was built to handle winter melt-off from the mountains and keep it from flooding and eroding farms downstream.

Of course, with climate change there’s less melt-off, but the old coders have an explanation for that, too:  “He’s gotten over her.”

© Buzz Dixon