My Favorite Toy
My parents told me they gave him to me as a Christmas present in 1955, in Detroit, Michigan in a two-story flat on Dexter Avenue.
I’ve seen the grainy 8MM movies, but of course, I don’t remember. After all, I was barely a year old, hardly old enough to know what was a “best friend,” let alone that he would be it.
At night, I’d hold him until I fell asleep; his very presence banishing monsters that lived under the bed and the shadow creatures in the closet. When wind against the windows caused the curtains to pulsate and the panes to howl a ghostly, eerie, wail, my little yellow buddy with the dark black eyes and furry body watched over me until the sandman cast his magic upon me. He shared my pillow, his yellow, foam, and fur body with plastic face peering over the blankets to protect me, long after I dozed.
I would drag him from Kevin’s to Joey’s to Victor’s during long vacations and hot muggy afternoons. He’d sit, floppy-necked, across from me on the kitchen table as I’d sip lemonade and draw with crayons. While I did homework, he rested, never complaining, near my pencil jar. And when no one was to be found and there was nothing to do but let my imagination take over, I covered him in aluminum foil, wrapped saran wrap around his head, suspended him from the ceiling light, and pretended he was an astronaut.
“Commander Puppy,” I said into my paper-cup microphone (adding the right amount of voice crackle to increase the realism), “This is Captain Scott. Over. Do you hear me? Over. Come in Commander. Over and out.”
Together, we spent hours; daylight until dark. January through December. Childhood through adolescence.
Avoiding Negative Drivers
Just to clarify, by “negative drivers,” I don’t mean people with road rage or people who tailgate.
“Drivers” are best thought of as models for inner patterns that influence our thinking, feeling and therefore the behavior we will do. Since they begin when we’re small children, one can say they are the voices of external authorities such as our parents. When we’re very young, we need our parents to direct us. However, as we age, we must take a look at what “drives” our behaviors and decide whether they’re still helping us or harming us. (For a great overview of drivers, follow this link.)
The five main drivers are:
Lessons in Patience from the World’s Slowest Pedestrian
I’m impatient, tense, and in a frenzy as I pull up to the intersection to turn right.
The light’s green but because a meandering male pedestrian is wandering unhurriedly across the crosswalk on the street to which I’m trying to turn, I’m stalled.
He’s quite the eyeful; forty and short – maybe five and a half feet tall, with a hobbit-type potbelly.
His brown hair is a bird nest of a toupee with the crown not even pretending to match the temples. He’s adorned in a garish, undersized, well-worn, striped, algae-greenish, polyester sports coat that doesn’t fit him — or the current decade. His trousers are twisted so his fly doesn’t line up with his belt buckle. Neither is aligned with the center of his body, each wrenched askew in a different direction. The waist of his pants is pulled up so high, resulting in the pant-legs being too short, exposing his calves well above his socks. (As a kid, we called those, “high waters” because if there were a flood, you wouldn’t get your pants wet.) Pants, grey; shoes, maroon; socks yellow — he obviously did not have a wife to help him choose his clothes.
Wrapped within his short arms that the sport coat’s sleeves do not cover, pressed to his chest, are too many files in too few folders. While navigating the crosswalk, he’s trying to prevent the papers from sliding out of the packets on to the ground, causing his hands to be constantly in motion, sliding hither and yon across them. Further complicating this maneuver, is his Styrofoam cup full of coffee held at a dangerously perilous angle. With each step, the brown liquid sloshes over the brim of the cup, splashing him and his documents. It’s clearly hot because when it makes contact, he winces.
To top it off, he’s slower than a sloth.
Granted, if I wasn’t so stressed, it might not have bothered me. After all, it was almost like observing the offspring of a gnome and a businessman, and how often does one see that?
[Read more…]
National “Give a Compliment Day”
It’s national “Give a Compliment Day.”
Okay, I lied.
I am not familiar with any holiday by that name on any date but I figured it couldn’t hurt to make one, could it?
So, how do you celebrate it? [Read more…]