ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 3, 1997 TAG: 9703030090
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: MONTY S. LEITCH
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
LET'S SAY you're getting ready to decorate the bulletin board or finish up the March newsletter, and you need to add one image - and one image only - that will say "Spring!" to all who see it. What image will you choose?
Chances are, you'll choose the same image that elementary-school teachers have been choosing for years: a perky, plump little robin, pulling a juicy worm from the earth.
You know this image. The robin is reared back, its feet planted firmly for balance. Its breast is redder than it will ever appear again this year; it's as red as red construction paper. And the worm doesn't seem unwilling at all. It is, in fact, curled in a little twirl at the end that extends from the robin's perky beak. The grass that's just beginning to sprout around them both is tender and yellow-green. There may even be daffodils. Perhaps with their cups cut from egg cartons.
Ah, Spring!
That picture says it all.
Has said it all for generations of elementary students, everywhere. It's an enduring cliche.
But, have you ever seen, in your own front yard or anyplace else, an actual robin and worm in just that pose? Think hard. Be honest.
I didn't think so.
I hadn't seen them either, until just the other day. It was one of those brilliant warm mornings that surprised us a week or so ago. Warm enough to have my coffee out on the porch. Warm enough to leave my shoes in the kitchen, and to think about leaving my sweater there, too. I sat in the sun, sipping my coffee, thinking, "Ah. Ahhhh."
And then - everywhere! - robins. A flock of robins picking their particular, individual ways across the mushy tufts of my still-wintry front yard.
Well, that would have been enough, wouldn't it? A suddenly summery day. A flock of robins, where only days before there'd been nothing but the drearily melting tag-ends of snow.
But then, one of the robins - seen in silhouette - bent to his task and plucked a curling, juicy worm right from the mushy tufts. I saw the picture! The very emblem of spring - there in my front yard. It was a glorious moment. A cliche come true.
The thing about cliches is, they're so utterly true. Everyone is warned against them: Writers aren't supposed to let cliches creep into their prose (one teacher I know has banned absolutely any mention of grandmothers or baby rabbits from all freshman themes); movie producers (and, more so, movie critics) rail against them on the screen; artists sigh and look away from cliches immortalized on canvas - or, more frequently, on watercolor paper. Cliches defeat originality.
But you have to know that every cliche was, once, completely original. And that it was so apt in its originality, its piquancy, that it stuck. Everyone wanted to have been the one to say that. So they said that (or filmed that or drew that); and thus, repeated over and over, what was once an original observation became a sad cliche.
Sad as they are, however, cliches still hold, somewhere deep, their original observation of truth. Stereotypes are the same: They are generalizations, often mean-spirited, and never universally true. But deep, deep, deep within them - there's that kernel of truth buried that can still sometimes be exposed.
Of course, in order to find the truth, you have to look at the cliche or the stereotype with new eyes. You have to find, again, the originality of the observation.
Is that an oxymoron: "find again the originality"? Well, you know what they say about those of us who live in ivory towers. We think too dag-blamed much.
Although, in our defense, I must point out that once in a while we actually see a robin pull a worm from the yard, rather than a mere picture of same.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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