Catch a Falling Star

I have a certain mania about hoarding old toys. My toys. My children’s toys. Other toys like abandoned toys from Goodwill and ReSale stores and liquidation toys from the bargain bins in Walmart and Toys-R-Us.

You see, the dependence on the importance in my life of people who are not real began with my own perceptions when the lights first went on in my little attic. Yes, my parents and my grandparents were real people. And I sometimes admitted, when forced, that my little sister was too. But so was Tagger, my own stuffed toy tiger.

I definitely treated him as my best friend and greatest confidant. I told him my troubles, and he protected me from monsters in bed at night. He often was included when I played with my sisters and their dolls. He was wise and brave and caring, and he talked with a voice that sounded very much like mine. In fact, I often think he was such a part of me that, when I no longer needed him in bed with me to help me sleep, I internalized him and he became a part of me. He did not meet his physical end until my parents had to leave Iowa and move to Texas while I was in grad school. What my sister did with his physical form, I really never wanted her to tell me. The house had to be cleaned out, and stuffed toys from the attic did not fair well.

I had almost given up ever being married and having a family when, at the age of 37, I finally fell in love, and then had a family, first of two, and then of three by the end of 1995. On the day my oldest son was born, as the doctor had told me to go home and get some sleep, I went to Walmart and bought a toy tiger. He was not orange like my Tagger, but white. He was about the same size as Tagger, and significantly larger than my infant son. Truthfully, neither number one son or number two son actually played with him. They slept with him and used him as a pillow, but they never even gave him a name. It was my daughter, my youngest child, who took him over and made him into a her. She named her Baby Tiger, loved her, talked to her, carried her around everywhere, and miraculously never loved her to pieces to the point that we don’t still have her 24 years later. The photos of her prove the miracle.

I am not Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame. But I do understand the importance of toy tigers. They help to make you who you are. And while they are technically not real people, technically you could argue, “Yes, they are too real!” and argue it very loudly. Of course, people will think you are a crazy fool if you do. But I doubt that changes anybody’s mind about Mickey.

NO, it’s not Italian. It’s nonsense.

And so is the internet.

I have discovered my primary email is on the dark web. What does that mean? It means that nonsense can bite you if you are not careful.

I have, of late, been barraged by messages from followers that I thought were interested in my books or my drawings. They said, “Hello.” I said the same in return. They asked where I was from. I answered, “From the Dallas suburbs. And I am here on Instagram to promote my books because Elon has made Twitter funky.” They ask, “Are you married? And do you have kids?” And I tell them I have been married for 27 years and have three grown children. And they ask if I am seeking a relationship.

Uh-oh!

Almost instantly they fall in love with me. They ask for a picture. I give them one where I look disheveled and greasy. They tell me how handsome I am.

Yes, I know I should immediately leave the conversation and block them.

But they tell interesting made-up stories about their starving children and how they recently lost their job.

And they are all young enough to be my grandchildren, and they have little-girl faces with pleading expressions. And they show me pictures with very few clothes on, and immediately start calling me “honey,” “baby,” and sometimes “sweetie.” And before the first conversation is old, they tell me they are in love with me and they need money for something.

And they have to be reminded repeatedly that I live with my wife and my daughter. And I am older than dirt. And I am not looking for a new tomato to squeeze. And I try to be polite as I tell them, “I am broke. I am a retired teacher, so of course, I have no money. And you look like a little girl to me. And please go away. Stop talking.

And then, after I make them explain how to find a WhatsApp app so we can talk encryptedly, and I made about five of them tell me that in the past week, even though I am now an expert on WhataSapp, I sometimes receive naked pictures from them to make my wife angry with, and sometimes I can see their phone number starts with 234 which routes their communications through Nigeria and firmly provides proof that the authorities told me means they are scammers. (I got that information from the time a Russian man tried to blackmail me and I turned the matter into the police who forwarded it on to… the FBI? Maybe?)

So, today I had to yell in all CAPS to one of them, “I know you are a scammer, so LEAVE ME ALONE!” And I blocked two of them before I wrote this post.

I am not paying for cancer treatments for any African princesses’ mothers.

And I know that I should not answer any more young ladies’ DMs. The email address on the dark web guarantees more of them will come my way. They think I am an easy mark. But some of them might actually be interested in books. And if they freely give me nude pictures, I can use them as models for nude illustrations to use with my nudist and naturist stories.

Geez, I am bad!!!

When I saw that she had passed, my first recollection was of watching her in the movie 1,000,000 Years B.C. I watched it on the midnight monster movie that I was forbidden to watch.

Of course, at twelve in 1968, I saw her without the fur bikini in my wicked little mind’s eye. And I believe I shucked off my pajamas too to give her full naked support as she fought and ran from the dinosaurs.

I was wrapped in my quilt, though, because Iowa can be cold after midnight, and I never knew if somebody upstairs would hear the television playing the movie real low and the commercials with the sound off so they could come halfway down the stairs and yell at me.

She was my idea of a perfect woman.

And I never actually saw her completely naked. Just like I never saw Annette Funicello au naturel. I bought Playboy magazines in college because Raquel was in them. But she was never fully naked in any of them. You don’t actually need to see that to know she’s perfect.

But even perfect people don’t last forever. Especially when they’ve already lasted for more than eighty years.

And people I really thought might last forever began proving that no one is immortal. First George Burns some time ago fell short of his 100th birthday. And my father died in 2020, shortly before he turned 90. And my mother died in 2021. And Betty White didn’t make 100 either.

So, there is no immortality. Not that you can prove in anyone who physically, provably exists… or ever existed. And now Raquel Welch is also gone.

And I think about my own mortality. And I slowly shake my head.

I am slowly losing the ability to see.

But things have never been more clear.

The world is literally dying,

And it is life-threatening to be here.

And yet, what dies can be reborn.

And the blind can better hear.