They sent the ducks down the line and I stamped them. They were not ducks of course, not even toy ducks. And stamping also, there was no stamping. Everyone called it “stamping ducks” and I went along. I try to get along with people generally and have learned from experience not to call something one thing when they are calling it another, even if that is not what it is. It’s just words. So I went along with the others and we all said they were ducks. It was easy work, even though I was thinking in the back of my mind that they weren’t really ducks. I stood across from Tony and we stamped them. Down the line other people were doing the same. Most of the ones that reached us had been stamped already, but we stamped them anyway. To fight off boredom we played games. Tony stamped mine and I stamped his. We competed to see who could stamp the hardest. Sometimes we let one go by and then ran after it and stamped it. It was my first day. “Simple,” the foreman said. “Here’s a duck” (it wasn’t a duck). He picked up a mallet and stamped it. “Now you do it,” he said. I watched Tony until I got the knack of it. “Look, it’s a duck,” he said to me, and he grabbed one by its “neck” and shook it in my face. He was convinced they didn’t suffer, or only suffered a little. Tony was a good sort, older than me, and years at the job had worn him down. “Another duck, another dollar,” he would say when he hung up his mallet at the end of the day, even though it was not a dollar and they weren’t ducks.