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In loving memory of Daniel J. Friedman 1926 - 2021 

People don’t often realize how funny shovels can be. It’s quite unfortunate to look upon the joyless grimaces of those glossy eyed onlookers passing through seas of grief to digest the epitome of humor within the oak of my core. 

I laugh at the holes! The holes I dug for all of you! And perhaps the weeping turnouts you could hardly call a reception that crowd around them. 

No no, it’s not the holes themselves that are funny. They act as the setup to a cruel joke we all tell ourselves eventually. Lo’ if this old shovel could talk, maybe I would finally laugh with people about my paradoxical life. I could leave the old dusty cabinet and bury those drunks on the plot with the lance of my wit and succumb to the indolence of my thought. For now I’m grasped, lunged, struck, held with trembling palms to fill a hole befitting a pine box. Until the day I’m held once again with an unfamiliar grip, and point my spade down to the eternal home of an old acquaintance. Unfortunately shovels cannot laugh to indulge in this poignant observation. If I were to have a name I should call myself useful, but I reserve the feelings of longing for an endearing moniker to when I’m finally heard. 

It’s quite cold today. The clear spotless hue of the uninterrupted pale blue sky unobscured as the noisy maple branches applaud the winds for its speed and strength. The soil is cool and fresh, like the gentle whisper of winter on an autumn morning. The hands that hold my arm begin to move the earth back where it was dug. It wasn’t a job suited for many people, I was quite confused to be passed along with each pile I moved. Sometimes I was even ignored! I watched to my dismay as the people cup the ground in their hands to delicately pepper the hole 

in somber flicks. Ridiculous! In one swing I could have moved five . . . ten pounds with the concerted effort they’ve made to drape the dirt elegantly and methodically. Yet still, like a dog nuzzling their palms go where my spade lay exposed. I suppose my workplace grievances are only normal. Oh how I yearn to bury the roots of a mighty oak to bring another generation to learn from my agony. Perhaps they can be better than I am. Learn to appreciate the little things. The mundane drudge of a job well done, or even a heart with enough curiosity to lift themselves wherever they want to explore. But there are no oak trees yet to plant. There are no eager minds to hang off my every word with excitement and wonderment. I lust solemnly and silently over the things yet to come, grieving the loss of my wayward self. Patiently burying it, along with the world while waiting foolishly for something to sprout. 

Is this truly all there is? What more is to come for a wretched life like my own? Filing it, sorting it, layers and layers of the past compacting to a single vein of memory in an endless epoch. I don’t want to move Earth, but I’d like the Earth to be moved by me. To sow the fledgling seeds of the future and harvest the analytical minds with the power to accomplish such lofty dreams. I will continue to lift and poke, strike, upheel, but it will not be for me. My wood splitting and splintering, the iron of my head to chip in brittle shards not of my own accord. I give my strength as a double edged sword and soon the name with which I’ve been known will be a lie. In the looming hours I’m to be buried under the fresh tinge of steel that’s set to replace my loathsome existence. He wouldn’t have met me and why would he? I never made friends with a pine box. 

Ethan's short story won first prize in the Ninth Annual Humanities and Sciences Writing Contest. Born and raised in Manhattan to the lovely folks Alyson and Alan, Ethan Friedman has been an animator since junior year of high school. He is majoring in Animation at the School of Visual Arts. All animation has inspired him, from loose, hand-drawn stylings to sophisticated 3D renders with dense topology and attributes. Judges Merlin Ural Rivera and Simon Van Booy have this to say about the story: "Encountering a story with rich and unsettling imagery and such a unique narrator, in this case an eloquent shovel who has (inevitably) mastered dark humor, is always a delight. The story masquerades as a witty rant, but beneath the surface the shovel imparts wise observations on the nature of death and grief and laments its own existence."