Greetings, Metaphor Mavens,

As a preacher, I deal in metaphors like pastry chefs use flour—the right kind and right amount make things amazing, but mess up the proportion or use the wrong mill and things end up unsatisfying. (Okay, I also deal in similes.) Metaphors give our brains something familiar to help us grasp complexity.

Which brings me to my 1972 Buick LeSabre. I purchased this car in 1983 from my sister for a bicycle and $680. The beast (metaphor) burned oil, not the blue smoke out the tailpipe quantity, more like ½ quart for every tank of gas. Driving short trips around the city, the engine burned less oil. But on long road trips with sustained driving, the engine heated up and slurped oil like a lounge lizard at an oyster bar (a simile and a metaphor).     
 
I thought of my old Buick the other day when I heard the CDC’s new social gathering guidelines. I’ve since read several articles questioning the competence of the messengers and the seemingly fickle nature of what is supposed to be a fact-based scientific approach. How can things change so suddenly? How can we trust people who keep changing their minds about masks, distancing, indoor/outdoor protocol? They seem about as stable as a chameleon on a swatch of plaid (a Foghorn Leghorn simile). Of course, someone who immediately links pandemic guidelines to a 1970s eight-cylinder GM product may not be trustworthy either, but stay with me.

The little part of my oil-burner that came to mind was the dipstick. Checking that long strip of steel was part of that car’s care routine. I’d lift that airplane runway of a hood (metaphor) about every three days, pull out that yellow-handled loop and consider how much dark brown viscous stuff was at the end of the ribbon. That dipstick read determined how much oil I would pour into the engine to bring it back to less corrosive performance. As I mentioned, the amount of oil varied, sometimes a pint, sometimes two quarts; sadly, seldom nothing. But I relied on the dipstick regardless of the miles driven or the days elapsed. The measurement’s reading determined the amount of intervention. The fact that things changed from week to week never led me to distrust the dipstick.

Of course, all metaphors break down. It’s hard to compare oil to a virus and a single automobile to a national population, and I’m certainly not calling the good folks at the CDC dipsticks. Large-scale epidemiological data are dipsticks (metaphor). They pull out readable information from the population, guiding our mechanical response. More masks? More distance? More vaccine? They do not well predict future mileage, as they are only snapshots (oops, mixed metaphor) of our current condition.

I’m happy to announce that current readings commend greater capacity. Our once considered over-built Sanctuary can now permit more worshipers, making reservations unnecessary. We will still leave our masks on indoors, we still want you to stay home if you’re feeling sick or believe you have been exposed to the virus, and we are still asking for special precautions around our unvaccinated children. (When the dipstick showed no need for oil, I still carried a few quarts in the trunk.) But bit by bit, we’re getting closer to being closer. 

That’s where my engine metaphor falls apart; over time my old Buick never got better, but kept getting worse. In the end I was T-boned (another metaphor) by a fully restored 1964 midnight blue GTO (ouch)! No one was physically injured, but both cars were totaled (not a metaphor—the cars did not turn into boxes of cereal).

As with all epidemiological information, things change. They currently are changing for the better, but we’ll keep checking the dipstick.

Appreciating the fact that you’ve been as patient as a bunch of Brood X cicadas, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Mechanic (metaphor)