This Paffooney was created with the mistaken idea that I would never have a child or be a Dad. Little did I know that after I turned 37 it would happen three times. This picture is one of my dream children, of the sort Charles Lamb once wrote an essay about. This is little Disney-Michael Beyer… a child who never was and re-created me in the birthing.
In 1976 I ordered a Mego Spiderman from the ad in my Avengers comic book. It came by mail. It was only 8 inches tall, not the 12 that would become the basis of my action figure (don’t call them dolls) collection. I love Megos. I should’ve bought more of them, but I was in college and had limited space to keep them. I ordered the Wolfman second, then the Lizard, and finally Iron Man. I was going to buy a Captain America next, but Mego stopped making these things at the end of the 70’s. That, of course, is what makes them valuable. The last time I priced them in the collector’s market, Iron Man was going for fifty dollars, and Spiderman for forty five. I have no intention of selling them. They will one day belong to my own children to play with or do with whatever destructive thing they will. Until then, they are mine to play with.
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It began last Thursday evening. My wife and younger two children were making a trip to Florida to a religious convention, so they weren’t in Texas. I had picked up my oldest son from high school and we went to get emergency supplies in case the coming ice storm caused us to have a snow day. We got the essentials; gingerbread cookies, milk, hot chocolate mix, and crackers. You know, stuff you can’t live without during a winter storm. I really didn’t think we would miss school. I thought I would just be forced to drive through nasty weather on my commute the next day. How foolish can I be?
That night the icy rain covered everything in a quarter inch case of ice. Branches, leaves, and even one whole neighborhood tree came down, brought down by the weight of the ice. My car was plastered and rendered inoperable, a fact I didn’t discover until I tried to get out the next day. Before 8:00 both my school and my son’s school had canceled classes the next day. It was good that we had no school since I left my winter sense back in Iowa long ago and have no shovel to clear the sidewalk. Heck, I’m too weak nowadays to break through the ice coat anyway.
Our poor dog was unable to get out to go poo, and when I did take her out, not only did I slip and fall on my arthritic old knees, she found it too cold outside to actually go. Great! Swollen knees… more aches and pains… and doggy doo hidden somewhere around the house.
Saturday, I could take the cabin fever no longer. Driven by a need for caffeine (I forgot to buy any Diet Coke and I don’t drink coffee) we got out of the house and walked several blocks to Jack in the Box. Yes, we let that creepy clown do our cooking. I got a lot of writing and some drawing done. I slept poorly because of aching arthritic bones.
Sunday brought more falls while walking the danged dog, who still didn’t poo (at least not outside the house where she was supposed to do her duty). By noon the temperature had climbed to 32.9 degrees Fahrenheit. I tried the car, and no longer frozen solid, it started. We celebrated by going to Walmart and buying groceries, and we ate McDonald’s food, not because we like it, but because nothing else was close by and open.
So, I hilariously believe I have survived another Texas weather event that seriously tried to hurt sick old me. Of course, my son’s school is already canceled for tomorrow. Will I get another break too? Or do I have another 45-stoplight commute in the morning over ice, and laced with idiot white people driving GM death machines too fast in bad weather? We’ll have to see who laughs last.
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In the novel I am working on at the moment, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius, I have a character that does something weird with rabbits that I used to do. I had a plastic dog-walking collar and chain that I used on a pet who definitely was not a dog. Ember-eyes was my New Zealand White buck rabbit. He was a large rabbit with bright red eyes, whiter than snow. He liked to go for walks, but it was definitely a dangerous undertaking for him. Dogs lurked around the neighborhood wandering loose and uninhibited. Dogs, of course, viewed old Ember-eyes as a tasty snack. I never really got into trouble with that, though, until my neighbor and friend Harry brought home a baby raccoon. He also bought a dog collar and chain, planning to walk the raccoon as I walked my bunny. Did you know raccoons will attack and eat a rabbit? Me neither. But they will. Nasty little hissy things they become when they are presented with food at the end of a chain. And of course, it was a baby coon, so my buck rabbit was larger and more muscular than her. And Ember-eyes didn’t like the idea of being a rabbit-burger for any teeny bandit that wasn’t even a proper predator. So the scratching claw-fight went on for about fifteen hare-raising seconds. I ended up carrying the victor back to his hutch, his heart beating so hard I could feel it with the hand I had under his behind. Harry had to figure out how you treat claw wounds to the nose of a raccoon. The vet didn’t want to see a vermin like that on his exam table any more than Harry’s dad wanted to pay the bill for it. Some salve on the tip of the nose was the eventual solution.
In the Paffooney I have a picture of Tommy Bircher and his pet rabbit Millis. Here he’s crossing Main Street Norwall in front of the VFW Hall.
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Gingerbread men may actually have saved my life. You may not have realized this, but ginger has a significant power over inflammation. I have had numerous struggles with bronchitis, chest congestion, and in the last few years, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. I discovered by yielding to the temptation to eat gingerbread men two winters ago, that the ginger in them actually makes it easier to breathe. They also help with acid reflux, a health scourge that plagued me until I discovered that eating ginger cookies, gingerbread men, and drinking ginger tea could actually make reflux go away.
Now, snowed in on a Friday when I should be teaching kids who are already shutting down for the holidays with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads, I am dreaming of gingerbread men, having used a last-minute-before-the-ice-storm trip to Walmart to lay in a supply of gingerbread men. They are the most important survival tool for me during the weather event
In my dream, the little brown-bodied cookie-men gathered around me to stare at me with raisin eyes. They wear only gum-drop buttons, white frosting squiggles, and red cinnamon sprinkles. Some brandish peppermint-stick spears and candy-cane clubs dangerously, letting me know that I better choose every move with great care.
“Why have you come to the Land of Gingerbread as an eater?” said one.
“I can’t talk to a cookie,” I said. “I am a human being, and I am supposed to be rational.”
“What are we supposed to do with a human bean when he’s trying to be rational?” a cookie man asked another cookie man.
“Let’s take him to the Ginger King. He’ll know what to do.”
So, I was surrounded by dangerous little cookie guys and escorted into a magnificent gingerbread castle. The castle stood on the edge of a cliff next to the Bitter Butter Sea. We made our way round the candy court until we reached the peppermint throne.
“So, great and hungry eater, why have you come to this part of the Dreamlands with your big hungry mouth and prodigious stomach?” The king addressing me was an even smaller gingerbread cookie than his subjects. He did have, though, a very large gingerbread crown, jeweled with red hots and candy corn.
“I ate gingerbread men last night to help me breathe and help me sleep without acid reflux.”
I was prepared to be the victim of their anger and recriminations. It was justifiable that they would be deeply offended and incensed.
The Ginger King smiled at me. “You have our blessings and our thanks,” he said. “It is the purpose and the goal of all gingerbread people to make your life better, and to make you happy.”
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Yep. Danged snake-men used to keep me awake as a kid. Kept checking under the bed… the closets… Could one of them swim through the plumbing and get into the upstairs toilet? One never knows. Drawing them was a way to make them go away.
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One of the features of the stuffed animal collection I have been building since my first son was born is the random goofy animal that is hard to identify. This is a possible Cool Cat minus shades and beret.There are spots where something has been lost and corresponds to what is missing. However, he does not have the simpering smile that I would expect on the puss of that 60’s cartoon critter. He does have an appreciation for good literature.
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You may have noticed the word “Paffooney” used in some of my posts. You may have been deceived into thinking it is some kind of real word. Sorry. It isn’t. It’s my own original made-up word for postable buffoonery, baloney, and goofiness… with accompanying picture. Yes, the picture is the key, though it may have no discernible connection to whatever the heck I happen to be writing about. It is an illustration for illustration’s sake… and a story for the sake of putting words with the picture. I confessed early in my blogging endeavors that I am basically a surrealist. I juxtapose disparate images and ideas and make meaning by forcing the relationship. Of course, you have no idea at all what I just said, and rightly so, because I tend to speak in college-art-history-meta-cognitive-gobblety-gook-speak, a language I first learned in college and have since banged into weird word-sculptures over the last thirty-three years by trying to explain things in a classroom to teenagers. (I love the job, but I do not recommend it for those with a loosening grip on sanity.)
So, here is the definition; Paffooney, proper noun, (Origin from a silly blogger’s head, consisting of Paff, meaning a silly cartoon sound effect, and fooney an even sillier derivation from buffoon and looney.) A silly picture and post combination caused by a brain fart or other gaseous anomaly inside Mickey’s head.
Forgive me, for I know my sins are many.
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Life is like a cartoon car chase in one of Floyd Gottfredson’s 1930’s Mickey Mouse comic strips. No, really, it is! You never know what is going to happen in the next frame. Will the alien space craft scoop up Junior as he flies out of the rumble seat? Fifty-fifty chance, don’t you think? Will Crocko Diddly-Dial catch up and eat everybody in the car? Probably not if it was a G-rated comic strip… and it was.
The only control we have over life are the reactions we can manage as we go and bad things continue to happen to us. We are trapped by the cliff and the river, so we jump the car successfully across. If we are successful, we bounce onto the road on the other side, and Crocko falls into the river. Of course it is the road to nowhere and the chase only ends when the cartoon of life reaches the last panel.
Okay, so that all sounds very scary, and we must hope that Mickey is merely crazy, and not on to something real in this metaphorical thesis of mayhem. Yet, there is a way to effectively deal with the car chase. We need to treat it all as a cartoon, a comic book story, and simply laugh.
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The Thumb-Sucker
Darkness surrounds us
As the nighttime moves in
And we feel overwhelmed
And burdened by sin
But comfort can come
From a place we’ve all been
Just open your mouth
And shove your thumb in
Our childhoods were happy
And made us all grin
And simple we were
With our little thumbs in
So as we’re all worried
And all feeling dumb
We can make it all better
By sucking our thumb
(Silly poems and blue cartoons are a specialty of mine. I’m no Ogden Nash, but I make it all rhyme.)
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