A NOTE FOUND UNDER THE BENCH
Before the beanie, before the side-eye, before the legendary three-hour reply window, Grumpo was the fastest duck in the pond.
He learned every shortcut. Answered every ping. Tried to keep up with a world that quacked in notifications. One evening, his little yellow body simply stopped at the edge of the water.
He watched a raindrop make a ring. Then another. Then another. Nobody asked him to be quicker. The pond didn’t care how many things he’d checked off.
So he grew a beak like a frown to keep the noise out. His eyelids got heavy from looking at too many screens. The three feathers on his head? The last three thoughts he refused to rush. And “Grumpo” is what the old pond reeds called the soft, low sound he made when he finally exhaled.
He isn’t mad. He’s buffering — on purpose.