Tag Archives: Life

Nary a Flea: The Things We Leave Behind

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To Market, To Market, To Buy a Fresh Flea…

Greenwood Red and I went and “did” brunch. Then we went to purchase nine (nine!) bales of very-exciting straw for my very-exciting straw-bale garden project (I hope it will look like this when it's done, only with vegetables).

So, since we were feeling all suburban and adult by doing both brunch and the hardware store on a Saturday, we thought we'd cap it off with a walk-through of the flea market.

Which was profoundly entertaining. It was a virtual feast, a garden of earthly delights, the detritus and ephemera of people's lives— plus the bizarrely and blatantly questionable attempts by someone (but who?) to make a quick buck in the most delightful and/or peculiar of ways.

Items One Can Purchase at the Flea Market, if One Should Desire to Do So:

A glass Mrs. Butterworth bottle, minus the syrup, cap, and label. This will set you back $3.00.

A piano, without strings. Or keys. Price unknown.

Ziploc bags filled with hotel toiletries, some of which also included a (hopefully) clean pair of socks. ($1.00 per. Get 'em before they're gone. Best Western soaps are hard to come by.)

Ziploc bags filled with unwanted, mixed-up Keurig coffee pods. Cheaper than any Keurig pods from anywhere else. But mostly decaf. Also, still in Ziplocs from someone's kitchen table somewhere. (In my heartless estimation, this would be a questionable purchase.)

Still in pristine boxes: the Disneyland “Monorail” board game and, its brother, the Disneyland “Frontierland” board game. These were shrink-wrapped, probably dated to the opening of the original park, pre-frozen Uncle Walt, and were $22.00 each.

A bedazzled sugar canister. (As in, someone literally took their sugar canister and hot-glued plastic rhinestones to the surface.) $10.00.

A Flowbee. Not bedazzled. Definitely well-used, but still with the original, if battered and dog-eared, box.

Pirate, sea-farer, and other-masculine-weathered-male ceramic mugs (Captain Kangaroo?). Perfect for one's morning cuppa, shared with two friends.

Very popular at the flea market: Patently Obvious Dollar Store/Tree/General merchandise: kitchen spices, feminine products, baby lotion, deodorant, gift bags, and pens. Fair warning: these cost about $1.50 to $2.00 each— because they have that flea market cachet added on now.

Miscellaneous jewelry, beads, magnets, fishing lures, buttons, and (?) in Ziplocs. (Ziplocs are very popular in the flea-market world. You can buy a bag of almost anything– a bunch of tangled anythings– in a Ziploc at the Flea Market.)

Used hats. (Prices vary. Wash in very hot water.)

Still-in-shrink-wrap but clearly aged candy– in large quantities. Like, as in, 36 packs of that gum they don't make anymore; that gum with early '90's popular font. But hey, 36 packs of old gum (new! in package!) for $3.90. Helluva deal.

Dolls. An abundance of dolls. Very, very creepy dolls.

Also, clown dolls. Even more creepy. (Greenwood Red says clowns are fun. Greenwood Red is sadly mistaken.)

A picture frame with someone's family photo still inside– from not very long ago. (This made me sad.)

A 1960 yearbook from a local high school. Reasonably priced at $25.00. (This also made me sad.)

A test missile (seriously). For $33.00.

Fine Art– actual paintings. Priced to support the artist's ego and your budget. Perfect for hanging above a fireplace:

Star Trek, Next Generation figurines (still in battered packages): Picard as Borg, Guinan, Wharf as Cowboy.

The same Lite Brite in the same box that I had as a child and that's still in my Dad's shed, waiting on me to retrieve it (Oh, I will, little buddy, believe me, I will): $30.00.

Two church pews. Not including hymnals. Sadly.

A suit of armor. (It's not real. Don't get excited. I'm an art history major and I checked it up-close. It's real metal, but it's not old; it's certainly not authentic. 'Course, the multiple-different centuries all mixed-up in one suit probably told you that.) Only $259.00 though. Not bad. Plus, it is still a suit of armor.

Samurai swords. $10 to $30 each. Also not real.

Dream-catchers of all sizes.

Chipped mugs, stained bedding, broken music instruments, sheet music, stained and matted stuffed animals. Children's clothes.

An entire corner filled with 20 to 30 vacuum cleaners. (Plug it in before you buy. All sales are final. Bonus: some of the canisters hadn't been emptied…possible treasure surprise!)

Hair clips! $1.00 each. Hot-glue, free time, and a penchant for crochet. Let no one tell you entrepreneurship is dead in America. It's alive and well at the Flea Market.

Vinyl records, cassettes, VHS tapes.

Suspicious laptops and computers. (MacBook Air for $349. Virus included!)

A shrunken head.

A circa 1901 wooden wheelchair. (This was both sad and creepy.)

A china plate with dogs playing poker painted on it. (It's possible that this came home with Greenwood Red and me.)

Salt-and-pepper caddy shaped like a horse.

The thing about a flea market: no fleas, no ant farms, no animals. (It could have used some cats, if you ask me.)

The other thing about a flea market… some of these things, these objects, you just know they've all got a story to tell. They all came from somewhere. Whose kitchen table was graced with that horse? Whose Christmas holiday was enlivened by that big felt thing with sparkles? Whose yearbook was that?

And how did it end up here, on these shelves, in these Ziplocs, jumbled together with big-eyed owl cookie jars and broken bits of clip-on jewelry, and outgrown children's clothes?

Who chose the scary clown? Who loved it?

Who sat in that chair? Played that broken flute?

Who drank from that mug and why did they pick that one out in the first place?

 

And do they still enjoy country music?

It just makes you look at your life, at your stuff: what do you have, what does it say, and will it end up in a flea market, jumbled with old Avon bottles (Bird of Paradise!) and memories. And will someone else like it too? When it can't be with you anymore, will someone else take it home to live with them?
And so many people, so many hands, so many lives– where did they go to; what stories would these things tell?
I do not know. There were no fleas to get in my ear.
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Ether/Vapor

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Sunday.

I was motoring, along 465 on a grey day, waiting for snow. There were billboards, everywhere billboards, and signs for gas stops, truck stops, the cheap, plentiful, and ubiquitous food. And the mood that's been hanging over my head fell in the way it's been threatening to do for some time.

Thunk.

It's all so insubstantial, isn't it? A culture, a society, a way of life that's built on and of the disposable, the transient, the impermanent. And somewhere between the sign for Concentra Urgent Care (Jennifer chopped more than her veggies. Now she's at Concentra.) and the sign for Chik-Fil-A (Two cows in firemen costumes, appearing to paint “Try Spicee Chikkun”), it occurred to me that this world, or at least here, is built on vapor. You could pass a hand through it. You could see its breath on a mirror, you could see its reflection, but don't try to see the object reflected, the object that's behind the respiration– it was built of plastic and neon in 20 minutes of undervalued labor. It will be torn down in less.

It's been coming for awhile, this sense of inescapable, perpetual insubstantiality; the sense that nothing is solid. People's houses are under water, “security” has seemed to mean only rent-a-cops in doorways and not a meaningful value actual people can acquire for their lives. The murals painted by well-meaning and middle class volunteers on bridges and buildings in poor neighborhoods where a solid investment in infrastructure would have real meaning but, what the hell, paint is cheaper, so we'll go with that. The budgets built on Continuing Resolutions and not actual, annual, literal budgets of needs and income, black columns and red. The way relationships, profits, bills, earnings, livelihoods, health, stability all seem to hang on the slenderest of filaments, easily snipped by poor luck, a moment of insufficient judgment, or a vehicle's mercurial belt.

The way we believe in “middle class values” and tout terms of hard work and respect and decency, and for all our ideals, for all the weight of our history, for all our vaunted beliefs, and despite a very great deal of hard work and capital, at the end of the day, we're stuck in a world of minute-to-minute, a tango of plastic and short-attention spans.

So that was the Sunday drive. That was, is, the mood of the moment: this sense that everything in the internal and external world is TBA: to be announced, written in pencil but never ink, tentative, impermanent. Ether, vapor, and air. But not much else, no matter our best intentions.

Other people have hit on it before, of course, you get Shakespeare's mortal coils and “such things as dreams; ” you get the literary castles of air; you get the Beckett and the Kundera, the “Incredible Lightness of Being.”

And even for the fact that our kin has been there before, written about it before, you can't help but feel they weren't talking about mannequins of cows spray painting the benefits of inexpensive, readily available chicken. They weren't talking about state monuments that were built of drywall and convenience: monuments to decades not centuries. They were talking about something basic, but they were not talking about us– because we're, well, not that.

Which is the mood that has kept going, of course; after all, I'm not a dog capable of easily relenting its bone.

And so long as we live the way we live, all slab construction, paint, and short-term planning, with jobs that don't satisfy and work that has lost its virtue and its rewards, with a culture that can celebrate “Honey Boo Boo” but not remember that just because a word has an “s” doesn't mean it necessarily merits an apostrophe; so long as we go on building everything of vapor, full steam ahead, planning for nothing, or (in political banalities) kicking the can down the road, I think the mood will continue. Hamlet getting trumped by his ghosts. A topsy-turvy world. An insubstantial world. In some senses, an immaterial world.

Of course, I will say, every now and again you see a bird stick its little feathery head out of the recesses of a neon “B.” Or you'll hear a little kid squeal with joy at a Tonka truck sliding across a table. And you'll think Now, that. That is real. There is actually something there. Something solid. Something real.

And you'll be grateful. But that, like everything else, will not last. Because, apparently, for this moment, nothing really ever does.

But moments pass, too. Vapor, themselves, incorporeal, mercurial, impermanent, and temporary. Vapor, electrodes, synaptic connections that connect and evaporate, connect again. Insubstantial. Immaterial. What's next?

The #Hashtag Post

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#Unknown #Story

Or: A Tale of Two Sweatpants

It was a cold and grey day in Indianapolis. A day of putty-colored sky against putty-colored road accompanied by putty-colored drizzle and a cold, damp, unforgiving wind.

Four lane road, busy at rush hour. Visibility is nil because it's all just one dun-colored world.

And there they were, the busy road and they, on the sidewalk. Non-descript, invisible coats. If it weren't for the sweatpants, they would have been transparent, hidden, completely unseen.

She wore a fleece jacket, invisible in the grey, with bright pink sweatpants and an air cast.

He wore an equally drab puffy jacket, the same non-color as the sky and the rain, but with royal blue sweatpants.

Two sweatpants. In the rain. On a busy road. Hugging one another for dear life and for reasons I couldn't possibly imagine.

They were nowhere near a bus stop. The sidewalk, frankly, led to nowhere.

And in 35 degrees Fahrenheit of cold and wet misery, on a four-lane road of short-tempered commuters, they hugged one another.

I don't know why; I don't know where they could go (she was in an air cast, for god's sake; they weren't going to get very far).

And yet, there was a story there. There was something to make them stop and hug like that, with no shelter and no privacy and no visible hope. There was a reason The Sweatpants made my eyes water.

I just don't know what it was. I don't think anyone ever could.

#Fringe

As in: Why must ladies' scarves always have…?

I wear scarves all the time. I'm cold-blooded, apparently. And I generally resist the urge to go all Dickensian and call them “comforters.” Primarily because no one would know what the hell I'm talking about.

But. Damn it. You know, there's something about fringe that's inherently skittish, unsteady, and unserious. Fringe is just so “gypsies, tramps,” and gallivanters.

I emphatically do not gallivant. Ignore my fringe. I know I do. Or try. Actually, I resent it. Some fashionista designer marketing pro at Target dictated that I would not have an option for a black scarf sans fringe, so here I am, warm but appearing to be unreliable.

I seek a scarf that says I am stalwart and trustworthy.

Unfortunately, the fashion gods have decreed I shan't have said scarf unless I knit it my own damn self. That's not happening, guardians of the accessories, so…

I wear scarves because I am inherently cold. And I confess to wearing them while hoping that they (a) cement my enrollment to Hogwarts (they never do) or (b) make me Benedict Cumberbatch-ish and Sherlock-smart (this they also never do).

The fringe helps neither of my extra-warmth fantasies. The fringe does not keep me warm. The fringe does not contribute to my overall vibe of “stalwart.” The fringe does nothing at all. It's such a waste of inexpensive foreign labor. I don't know what it could possibly be for.

I detest fringe. Yet, there it is. Inescapable and permanent. Perma-fringe. I despise it.

#CarrotsInThe Workplace

Actually, let's be specific: baby-cut carrots in the workplace.

Also known as: 45% of the reason St. Anthony went to the desert and became a saint (no baby-cut carrots there).

Also known as: 50% of the reason Simon sat on a stylus-shaped pillar in the middle of yet another, different, blissfully carrot-free desert and became Simon the Stylobate.

And the reason I will probably have to telecommute and/or sell Avon/Primerica/Pampered Chef/Tupperware from home.

The crunching is indecent. Quite frankly, it's obscene.

Carrots in the Workplace should be either forbidden or Coming to a Theatre Near You: The Horror! The Horror!

Beta Carotene…Healthy snacking: my ass. Carrots in the Workplace could drive a gal to drink. There is no reason for food to be that loud.

But maybe that's just me. I should probably be a hermit. But I guarantee I shall never be a Saint. And I shall never eat a baby-cut carrot within earshot of human hearing. Because I love people too much to drive them mad with incessant, mindless, gut-tearing crunching.

You're welcome, people of the world. You're just so very welcome.

#DesperateMarketing

Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty twirl arrows on the street in front of Tax-in-a-Box Shop from January through April. Uncle Sam and Statue of Liberty twirl the same “Sale,” 3-foot arrows in front of “Fireworks-Cheap-Discount” shop every May through July. And Big Nasty Gorilla/Ghoul/Death-with-Plastic-Scythe/Cleopatra twirl paperboard arrows with “Deals! 50%Off!” at me every August through October.

Pizza, pizza employee at Cheap-Pizzas-Are-Us (Little Caesar's, Domino's) twirl the arrows by the road every single day from 4 to 10 p.m.

And they all, every single one of these characters, wave. They wave at me. They wave at you. They dance to the music in their iPods as they pick up 4 hours of minimum wage for braving the elements in costume. And they wave.

I could go off on a rant regarding the moral mystery play that occurs while I decide whether to wave back (no, I shan't) and what I do with the guilt that results from denying another human being one shred of connection or human comfort.

Instead, I will present this public relations-based argument:

These characters with their costumes and their paperboard arrows attract my eye. How could they not? But they never, I repeat, never, entice me to stop and drop in. They do not say to me “this shop is awesome, fairly priced, and professional.”

They say to me “Avoid at all costs. We can't get 'professionalism' right. Our services aren't good. Our prices are mediocre. We're on perma-sale 'cause we gotta be.” They scream “Caveat emptor!” A slogan that would be a better fit for the flimsy cardboard attention-getters.

I have never set foot in a store that pays someone to twirl paper on the side of the road during rush hour and I guarantee I never will.

These are commercial enterprises which reek of desperation and nervous sweat. I do not trust their products. I am suspicious of whatever it is they are peddling.

Do these arrows and these costumes work on anyone?

I'm really curious. Does anything about the flammable Liberty costume tell you to trust your sensitive financial documents to them? Does the equally un-flame-retardant Uncle Sam outfit tell you to purchase the means to Uncle Bubba's Great-Loss-of-Thumb-of-'13 at the store behind the arrow? Does the cheap and jankety Sphinx head on polyethylene pantsuit tell you to stop and seal in your costume party dominance?

Somehow, I doubt it.

So…who's the genius who thought that would work? And why are people still flammably-dressed and initiating deep moral conundrums on people still working the streets of suburban America?

Can anyone, anyone, explain the marketing genius of this gimmick to me?

I know I can't, but surely someone knows why the practice continues. I leave it to you, Dear Readers, to suss out the method behind this madness.

 

Damn It, Sally.

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Earlier today…and every, I mean ev-er-y, single blessed day…

There was Sally, attempting to walk in shoes that missed practical by several inches.

Sally looks great. She always does. She of the 3-inch stilettos, the canny elevator wedges (elewedges). Sally is fashionable. Sally is pretty. Sally looks composed and professional and stylish.

Until she has to move.

So there's Sally in the one and only long and narrow hallway which leads from work to parking. And she's, you know, not moving quickly (because she just can't; the shoes never permit) and she's not-moving-quickly square in the very middle of the long and narrow hallway.

Damn it, Sally. Look up from your phone and stop texting.

See, if you would look up for a second, you would notice that the madding crowd is on your stylish heels. And we're all frowning.

At you.

Because you are (a) blocking egress from the building (b) and you're not doing it quickly and (c) you're oblivious. And (d) do you really have nowhere you need to go?

Hug the wall, honey. Move to the side. Hell, Sally, just stop and stand there and we'll all go around you. Like a river around an eternal and immovable rock.

Sally does this in the mornings (the texting, the mincing, the oblivion) too. And Sally has a posse or twins or lots and lots of copycat admiring wannabes who do the same thing.

In the mornings, in the evenings, my days are filled with Sally: Speed-up, Sally and Seriously, Sally and Shit, Sally, and Just-Move-Already, Sally.

A surplus of Sally. A superfluity of Sally. Sally, Sally, everywhere– except out of everyone's way.

But I guess you've got to give her credit because, my god, her shoes are just darling, after all.

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Study Art History

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a.) ‘Cause they’ll never find a job. No, really. Here’s what happens: there are a billiondy art history majors. Some of them will go on to pursue doctorates in something actually useful. The rest of them will become government sops, managers at Ann Taylor, and sundry. The other 5 will get their MFA and their PhD and teach for a living. Which will be great. But only one of the 5 will actually ever make tenure. Turns out, Art History isn’t so useful in a modern economy for the world’s temporarily remaining superpower.

b.) Because this is what will happen:

b.1.)

b. 1.) (ahem) They will drink potentially too much, go to the restroom and see a $10 print of Argentinian-painter-who-paints people-dancing-on-the-beach. This print will be framed, “easily accessible” (in art criticism terms), and it will remind them, every time: art is something for coffee mugs and field trips. Sure, you thought it was an excellent vehicle for understanding the intersection of religion, culture, and history; but no, it’s simply a decorative representation of attractive people cavorting on a beach. In the moonlight.

b.2.) They will then be pissed aggravated because they can’t remember the Argentinian’s name. They will then be pissed at the status quo, which determines what is “Art” and what is “artistic.”

b.3.) Because they will see that painting, in the loo, and realize that they studied the history of the decorative, not the substantial, and even though Dostoevsky said “beauty will save the world,” it’s not true. Hard work, doggedness, decency–these will save the world, not Argentinians in satin, dancing on the sand. Doubly so for those who don’t paint the Argentinians in satin. Those people will do nothing of worth except create more words. As though there weren’t enough of those.

b.4.) They will hit their heads, roughly 3.5 hours after the first drink de choix, “Or was he Chilean?”

c.) Then they’ll encounter… Suzon. (Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère,1882)

c. cont.) Suzon sees all.

You should have studied bandages, corn, and STEM technologies…Suzon sees. Suzon shouts “Mill! Utilitarianism! Be Useful!”

The boy you love…he’ll never know….Suzon sees.

The regret that you daren’t express out loud when you know you’re useless and you’ve gotten it all, like, as in every-freaking-thing, wrong…you guessed it, Suzon sees.

You love…and they’ll never know how much…yep, Suzon knows your secret, you transparent tool, you.

See, Mother, Mama, you who love an Art History major, Suzon knows: when your gal–or guy– has had just a pint enough to know what a waste, that knowledge for its own sake thing, actually is, in real-world terms. Suzon knows, too.

What’s worse? c.1.) Your Art History major knows, too. S/he’s probably written a paper or two on Suzon, for goodness’ sake. So your Art History darling knows that Suzon knows that you know that Suzon knows…

And Suzon sees that, too.

In fact, your Art History darling, when she’s not splitting her limited time on the planet between wondering the best policy decisions for her actual country and the reasons for papal-imperial conflict in the twelfth century in medieval Europe, has spent her time writing 5,100 words to her professor on why he’s wrong (R-O-N-G) that Suzon demonstrates Manet’s impartiality to the world (no, of course she doesn’t: Manet was painting Suzon’s closed relationship to the world as a service employee. There’s a difference.).

And Suzon, (sigh) sees that, too.

Suzon sees every memory the Art History victim has, every disappointment the Art History Failure has inflicted on her family, society, the world.

Suzon sees every failure, hurt, and care in the eyes of the one who observes.

And, dammit, the Art History major staring at the $20 Deck the Walls version of Suzon sees that Suzon sees.

And it’s all infinitely worse from the reflection.

And that, my Mama darlings, is why you (thou) should (shalt) never let your (thine) babies grow up to be Art History majors.

 

 

 

 

Rudolph, the Random Reindeer

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Don't get excited; it's just another post of random-ness.

Just one of the very many reasons I'm glad Jim DeMint is retiring from the Senate: Because Mr. DeMint (R-SC) says things like “When government gets bigger, God gets smaller.”

Speaking of DeMint: You know what I wish they'd make? Heritage Foundation piñatas. See, what brought this up is Mr. DeMint's new gig at the Heritage Foundation (obviously). I was thinking, “oh great, now I'll never be able to use all those groovy DeMint puns I've been crafting and storing up for future use when he says something batshitcrazy ridiculous. Unless I'm just in the mood for some Heritage Foundation-bashing (which actually does happen).”

*Light bulb* Someone should make Heritage Foundation piñatas. I'd buy 'em all, buy some bats, and have a party. Then I'd eat candy.

Win.

So I've finally named my Gym Nemesis: Strangely, I didn't go with “Jim Nemesis.” So, at the gym, there's a guy I've been referring to as “The Whistler.” For nearly two years now, this guy has creeped me out at the gym. Picture the pool area: it's night so it's dark in there (I can't go during the day. I work.). The lights are low, the paint on the ceiling is peeling a little bit, so it's kinda steerage-on-the-Titanic anyway. Now add you, in the pool, alone. (Sweet!) But now….go underwater because you're doing laps. You come up for air and you hear whistling, sometimes it's Somewhere Over the Rainbow (I kid you not), sometimes it's just made-up merriness with pseudo-melody.

There's a guy walking around the perimeter of the pool (ewwww) or, worse, he's sitting on the stairs. Just whistling. This is one cheerful guy, probably a perfectly decent guy.

But it's the pool. There's whistling. It's dark.

And you think: “this is the last sound I'm ever going to hear, isn't it” or “well, isn't this the perfect start to a really bad horror movie.”

Well, the Whistler has been there as long as I've been swimming at the gym. He has now added hocking to his repertoire, so his routine is now: walk around the pool while whistling, sit on the pool stairs while whistling, walk to the shower in the locker room hallway, hock disgustingly in the pre-pool shower (it echoes there, see, 'cause it's in the pool room), proceed with peppy whistling. Wash, rinse, repeat. Happy song, creep a girl out, hock a loogie, happy song. No shirt, no swimming, nothing but walking, whistling, sitting, spitting, walking, whistling.

Well, he's my gym nemesis. And tonight I've decided the name makes him sound too much like a comic book villain.

So now he's Braden Whistler-Hocker. The Third.

For some reason, this makes me like him better. Not enough to make eye contact or anything. But at least with that name, I don't think he's going to kill me.

See, The Whistler would have killed me while chirping some old standard as I drowned while looking at peeling paint on the ceiling. Braden Whistler-Hocker the Third won't do anything more dire than spit something nearly solid in the public (!) pre-pool shower. So basically, he's harmless now.

Or is he? (Mwuah, ha, ha, ha.)

When I (finally) Get My Superpowers… So I'm pretty sure I'm eventually going to be a Super-Something. When that happens and I'm a big hero and all, I've been thinking, and here's what I'm going to do. I am going to use my superpoweriness to ensure that Mariah Carey and Celine Dion never ruin another Christmas again.

I mean, after I fight Actual Evil and Make the World Safe for Humanity.

But seriously, after that? I'm saving Christmas.

You're welcome.

 

Apropos of Dorothy: A Little Moment in Celebration of Crayons of the Eighties

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Crayola crayons were and are always the best. However, in the eighties:

I was introduced to Prang crayons. My friend Megan had them. At first, I spied them suspiciously: they were not Crayolas. How could they possibly be good?

Alas, crayon snob. Prang crayons of the eighties were waxier, it is true. However, their color was far more saturated than Crayolas ever could be. I learned to love Prang crayons. Sadly, they never came in64 flavors colors. That was the drawback of eighties-era Prang.

And circa 1983, in a house of brown on Loomis Avenue in Colorado Springs, I (we, my sister and I) were introduced to K-Mart brand crayons. Yes, their box and wrappers sucked. They screamed of “generic.” But it would be misguided not to give them a chance. Waxier than Prang, waxier than candles, were the K-Mart brand crayons.

But.

There has never been a prettier color, not in nature, nor in artifice, than a 1983 K-Mart brand crayon in Kelly Green.

No, don’t argue. I win. (Who else would care about Crayons of the Eighties?)

And second place? Prussian blue. Also of the K-Mart persuasion. Crayola had nothing of the like.

Why? Because, seriously, that’s the color God chose when he invented the word, the very concept, of color. (Kelly green, K-Mart brand…I know I meander, but, c’mon. Pay attention.)

Crayola is still–will always be– the grand champion of crayon manufacturers. But K-Mart– well, they’re not so very successful now– but they will always be the ones who gave the most beautiful color to the world.

In 1983.

Quoth the Dorothy, “Nevermore.”

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Once upon a time, there was a babysitter. Her name was Dorothy. She was the babysitter for my sister and I when we were about 5. This was on Webster Street.

Dorothy was nice, although not particularly conversant in “young kid.”

Dorothy served us cream of mushroom soup. Canned. (Again, not particularly conversant in “young kid.”)

Dorothy served us cream of mushroom soup in her kitchen. She had a 50′s style dinette set, oval, formica faux-marble top. The chairs were ripped, felt-lined grey cabbage-rose covered naugahyde. (This is purely incidental. All of the above was the same color as the cream of mushroom soup.)

Dorothy introduced us to the Disney channel. In the 80′s this was not a bad thing. This was a pre-Hannah Montana, pre-The-Suite-Life, pre-tween era when such a thing was actually very, very good.

However.

Dorothy gave us a room, her baby-sitting room. This was the playroom. It contained a toy or two and a tiny, collapsible card table sized appropriately for a four or five year old child. On said table, there was a ceramic Christmas tree. It lit up. That was great (I had never seen the like outside of a nursing home. And it lit up. So: winner).

Also on the table? A huge– I mean, seriously, the thing was massive– container of crayons.

You know what? I could eat the nasty un-kid-friendly cream of mushroom soup all day long. You bet. I could accept the complete and utter lack of cake in that place. (Did I mention? Dorothy didn’t give us any cake.) What I cannot–nay, never– forgive, no matter how kind and sweet Dorothy was (and she was), was the fact that she dumped those crayons into one, gigantic, waxen, Tupperware-encased mess of disorganization.

The nerve! As if she didn’t know that crayons belong in their box, in chromatic order, and that periwinkle should never touch melon should never touch sea-green.

But no! Alas, poor Dorothy.

She didn’t know. And that’s why she was the world’s worst babysitter (probably an exaggeration, because she really was kind. Plus she lived on Webster Street, the best street). Dorothy mixed the crayons, the beautiful, amazing, hundreds of crayons. They were thrown helter-skelter, nilly-willy in an un-beautiful heap in a Tupperware container.

The saddest sight my five-year old eyes ever did see.

Thank god she had Disney channel or I might not have made it to age 6.

Going Weird on a Friday: November 9th at the Walmart

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Seasonal Affective Disorder, anyone?

So it happened tonight. You can mark it down in your planners, folks. Tonight was the night for that annual weird thing that happens every single year since I became a fully-fledged adult.

I was at Walmart, as I am occasionally forced to be because they are the only ones in the area that carry my preferred brand of (doesn't matter). Christmas stuff was out (I didn't even look at it) but yet, it happened…

I don't know quite what this is, but every year there comes a day, somewhere between Halloween and Thanksgiving–I'm usually in a drugstore when this happens but this year it hit at Walmart (god help me)–

I'm in an aisle. I'm shopping for bleach and what-not, not even looking at the Christmas merchandise, and Christmas-affective-disorder hits me square in the jaw. Correction, hits me square in the tear ducts.

What the hell is that?

Every year, I, innocently as ever, waltz into a store in November-ish, thinking I am going to pick up cat food or bleach or what have you, and I get blindsided by Christmas pasts and Christmas nevers and my eyes tear up— and I don't know why.

In Gilbert and Sullivan-y terms: or wherefore.

I can't explain it. I'm never looking at Christmas when this happens. But it never fails: one minute I'm shopping in a moment that just happens to be pre-turkey and the next, I'm fighting back tears over dreams of Christmas that happened and I can't get back or dreams of Christmas that I'm afraid I'll never see or creche scenes that I wanted to believe in but somehow couldn't.

Or that Santa isn't real and I really hate that. Or that Christmas comes but once a year and we really need it more frequently…or….

Or? I seriously don't know. I'm not an infrequent guest on the Great Nostalgia Show. So it might be related but I can't tell you.

Does this happen to any one else? Like, you're thinking “Gee, I'm out of scrubbers” and the next damn thing you know, you're hearing Nat King Cole sing “The Christmas Song” about three weeks before you really should and you're, well, just a little helpless for an aisle or two.

Maybe it's just me, but I doubt it. (Not so all-fired special, me.) At any rate, at least the annual episode is out of the way. Same time next year.

 

The Frog Prints

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A Truly Terrible Tale for a Rainy October Night

A long time ago in an Indiana town far, far away (or roughly an hour and forty-five minutes if you go the speed limit or whatever) a boy regaled his classmates with a story so terrific, so awful, and so, well, lasting that I have never, ever, ever forgotten it. Lord knows I have tried…sorta. Because the story took place on a rainy fall day and was told on a rainy fall day, I cannot see a leaf on the ground on a rainy fall day without thinking about it. Now you all can think about it, too. You're welcome.

It was a grey and wet October afternoon and a boy we'll call E, the E Who Shall Not Be Named, said he had an interesting fall walk. He was walking through the neighborhood, crunching and slushing his way through fallen leaves, as one does. What to his wandering eyes should appear among the soggy leaves but one perfectly robust piece of autumnal crispy glory. He couldn't resist it. In fairness, who could? In a fit of adolescent exuberance, he took one big leap in the air and landed square on the big lovely leaf.

There was no crunch.

No, there was a squish, perhaps a splat, coupled with a deep disappointment of the kind that only comes when one is suddenly and shockingly deprived of certain, immediate satisfaction.

That was no leaf. That was a frog.

See, it's a terrible story. And there's no happy ending. Nope. The frog lives on only in memory. Although, you have to admit, that frog would never, presumably, have achieved the kind of celebrity it has since found if it hadn't been for E's foot landing so indelicately on a fateful fall day. (See, at last we get there: frog prints!)

Small consolation for a frog, one supposes. Of course, we'll never be able to ask.

I can honestly say I have never since crunched a leaf with any amount of force or velocity. Or at least, not without verifying that it is indeed flora and not fauna first.

Again, sadly, small consolation for a frog.