We used the decorative red rubber lobsters as monsters to fight the star wars figures.

The lobsters won as often as not. The claws were just the right size to hold Greedo and Han.

The Player: You see, we’re strictly of the Blood, Love and Rhetoric school. We can do you Blood and Rhetoric without the Love, or Blood and Love, without the Rhetoric, or all three concurrent or consecutive; but we can’t do you Love and Rhetoric without the Blood. Blood is compulsory. They’re all blood, see?

Guildenstern: Is that what people want?

The Player: It’s what we do.

What’s the first thing you remember? The first thing, after all the things you’ve forgotten?

For me? My earliest memory? I’ve talked about it in my journal before, I have no doubt… but probably not in any detail. If I’m not mistaken (and who could correct me if I’m wrong?) It’s of a visit to the Boston Zoo (Franklin Park, I believe) as a young boy (I was perhaps 3 or 4, prior to my brother’s birth, in any event) with my Mother, her pal Vera, Vera’s infant daughter, Michelle (maybe a year old at the time). We got to see monkeys, bears, and visited the reptile house. The warm-blooded creatures seemed happy and playful…. the cold blooded ones didn’t strike me as having any personality in particular, save for being alive. I wanted to swing from one of the snakes like Tarzan on a vine… I imagine I saw that in a cartoon somewhere.

There was also a petting zoo, but Michelle was too frightened of the goat to stay for long. My first memory of petting an animal is a brown rabbit… unless petting Lila (a black/white/brown Lhasa Apso she-dog we had earlier) is an earlier memory that I’ve misfiled along the way. I don’t know if the rabbit was a male or a female, the black nose was wiggly, and the creature was warm and easily loved by a child despite smelling a bit like a barnyard. I don’t remember the lions, or any big cats.

Michelle is dead now. My Mother thinks that she saw Shelly’s ghost when she went up for the funeral. Shelly never married, but was a sweetheart. I still have a small memento of her life in me because she’s a part of that first memory. Vera divorced her husband last year.. or was it the year before? I don’t know if it was because the kids were out of the house, and they had nothing in common, or if it was something else. Joe had a hot temper, and Vera was a bit of a stoic. Kevin, Michelle’s younger brother, perhaps 30 himself now, has married and divorced, too. When I think of Kevin, I still think of him at five years old, great at skating on ice, and playing kiddie-hockey, like any good Northern kid… when I moved away, to Virginia.

Was that really so long ago? Back when Star Wars figures were new… a favored land speeder with my name written on it in black magic marker, so I’d be able to tell it from the toys of the neighbor kids. Chewbacca always got to drive, because he matched the color of the car, along with Jawas, Sand people and C3PO. (I always favored the Villains and non-human figures. More interesting costumes.) Plus, Browns, golds and rusts have always been a nice set of colors for plastic toys. Do I like Chewbacca because of that rabbit, long ago?

More difficult is trying to think when my second-oldest memory is. What comes next? My room? Pale blue, with many different colored pennants made of felt. A blue one With Linus. A mustard Yellow with Charlie Brown Happiness is a warm puppy, a green one with Snoopy on his doghouse, Cursing the Red Baron. (Wow, it’s amazing what can be found on the Internet.) A basement playroom with a franklin stove, fishing net motif, with dried starfish and red rubber lobsters…. a toybox my dad made, with a whale inlaid on the top along with the names of both of his sons in now-inexplicably gothic lettering. I wonder where that toybox went to? It followed us all the way to Florida, and was still in the garage when I moved out on my own. Its sort of sad to think that it may be broken up in a landfill now. I hope that it’s something that is still loved, somewhere. I played my first vampire in a coffin in that box. It held Tonka Trucks, hot wheels and track, Big buckets of Lego bricks, Star wars figures, super hero dolls (not action figures yet… we could call ’em dolls and still be dead butch) including the Hulk with his bolted limbs. Lincoln logs, tinkertoys, and real wooden blocks that my dad made from scrap… he sanded and shellacked those things to the point where not only would there never be a splinter, and they were just about frictionless on the carpet. He also stained them all sorts of colors…. I don’t think any two blocks were the same shade, all went from Pine-blond to Mahogany dark. [update 8:22….I called my brother, and found out through his beer-slurred speech that he had the toybox until he moved to Hawaii. He couldn’t find anyone to take it in, so he left it by the side of the road for anyone to pick up. Last seen ten years in the past.]

These memories make me feel sort of bittersweet. My Dad must’ve been about my age now when I was 12. He made so many things for my family. Provided a home, clothing, food… built toys, bought even more. Taught me all sorts of things that I use regularly. I’m glad that I can apply things about him in my daily life… it’s nice to let the good parts of the past help to build the future by way of the present. It’s a damn shame he had to die so early on, but I’m honored to be a part of his bloodline and to be allowed to pass his knowledge on to others, by example if in no other way. My dad wasn’t perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but he made pretty good use of the tools at hand. I like to think that I do the same.

What was my first book? I know this one, but I can’t seem to recall… my mind has other thoughts rattling around in the forefront right now, blocking the light of that particular memory like moths in front of a candle. I’ll move on for now… I’ll rethink more memories later, dear journal.

book quiz

Waiting for my ride… I kept getting the feeling that someone was watching me…I don’t know why I chose a confused hammerhead. I suspect a shark would just want to ask me for directions to the beach.

The bus was nice this morning… mostly awake people, you could almost see thoughts forming over their heads as they read a paper, or took in the surroundings. Sometimes, you can just see the gears moving when you look at certain folks. Outside the window, the sky was beautiful… nary a cloud, just a sharp, bright blue, only broken up by aircraft with a long, white vapor trail behind… a dividing line across the top of the inverted bowl of the stratosphere above.

Mongo, my inner caveman is trying to tell me something. He seems pretty set on getting information to me, but there’s a communications barrier. I wish he wouldn’t try to talk… he’s better at getting his ideas across with pictures… or is he? Maybe he drew the shark and jet.

Hmm.. sharks, jets. West Side Story? Is that what you’re trying to tell me, Mongo? I doubt it… he never was much for dancing hoodlums, or Rita Moreno… though everybody likes Leonard Bernstein, right?

He could do look that would make me go “nung-nung-nung” like one of the three stooges, and beat a wicked fast retreat.

Feeling a bit better this morning. The weekend is ahead of me… I hope it brings good stuff to me and those I care for. I need to make a point of having at least one fun-day, spend some time with mi amor if possible. I want to dry the mist of melancholy that’s seeped into the corners around here. Shuffle along, now, Winter vibe. It’s time for Spring.

Danny’s taking the students in his Sci-Fi club to the Renfest this Sunday… I’m sure they’ll have a grand time (as long as he doesn’t have to go on stage).

Long day ahead of me today, end of week wrap up, Schedule Newt’s next trip to the doc, make the on-call schedule for March (and maybe April), Get grant submissions launched and finish training ADP.

Until Later, dear journal. I’ll be back midday to procrastinate, I’m sure.

A five-year-old boy married a puppy to ward off the evil eye on himself and family in India. The groom’s father told newsmen that tribals believed that such marriages would keep the boy, his family as well as the society at large away from the evil eye. Continue reading 6473 morning, morning, who's got the morning? →