Tag Archives: photo Paffooney

April 1, 2024 · 1:23 am

Being Iowegian

I was born in the 1950’s in Mason City, Iowa… the town that produced Meredith Wilson, the creator of the Broadway Musical, The Music Man.  Yes, River City in The Music Man is Mason City.  So I was born into a unique Midwestern farm-town heritage where swindlers came to town and saved the day with music and an eleventh-hour change of heart.  I was born into the land of Chmielewski Fun Time on the black-and-white TV, Lawrence Welk champagne accordion music, and the Beer-Barrel Polka, courtesy of loads and loads of German ancestry.  I am that unique crossbreed of Scandahoovian and sqare-headed Deutschmann  known by the only slightly racist term of Iowegian.

Corn Country!

943363_457313854350548_485543538_n388135_298275616878726_103835066322783_936339_2005428082_nLand of Long Winter and the ice-storm breezin’ down the plains.

And if you ask an Iowegian if he loves Iowa, he will answer, “You bet!”

And if you ask a northern Iowegian the same thing, he will say “You betcha!”

Iowans talk funny, don’t you know…

There are still corner stores and farm supply stores, though they have gone to brand names now, like Casey’s, BP, and Tractor Supply Co.  You can still find HyVee and Safeway grocery stores.  There are still a precious few family farms that haven’t been swallowed whole by big corporations and agri-businesses.  If you go to the county fairs, you will still find kids showing the cattle or pigs that they raised for 4-H projects, and if you go into the barns after the auction, they are still producing tearful kids hugging and kissing that calf that won a red ribbon and now has to be sold… and they will never see poor Barney or Moo-berry again…

1399024_220039334824422_480122723_o 1450109_688917614523503_5237770938249269421_n 10418988_688917684523496_8272199480536313576_n 10350345_10152788940611349_2865049925004654610_n 10563018_688909541190977_6371844517698833981_n DSCN7127It is the land of the lonely gravel road… the back-street cattle pen… the Saturday night tornado (nearly every Saturday in Spring)…  The VFW and the Lion’s Club Fish Fry at Lake Cornelia….And it is a place where most everything reeks of the past and old ghosts and times long gone, soon to never be remembered because there’s no longer anybody around who is old enough to tell the stories that grandparents and aunts and uncles used to tell.  I not only miss it desperately, but I feel deeply saddened by the loss.  Would I like to go home again?

“You betcha!!!”

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February 3, 2024 · 1:29 am

The Dog-Walk

Yes, I will admit to walking the dog for all the wrong reasons…  I take her to prevent more poop piling up in the house on the living room carpet, but that’s just the most obvious reason that my wife and kids truly believe is the only reason.  The truth is more sinister.  When life goes against me (like my recent trouble with anti-teacher policies in Texas and the scourge known as insurance pirates) I take the dog out for walks so I can stumble and grumble and swear at the dog.

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I took my camera along on this walk because I needed something to post for today even though I am all grumbly and rumbly and not ready to write.  As we were taking off, I noticed my wife’s daffodils had sprung up to look around, confused by the warmer, wetter weather than we normally get during the time of year when Dallas is known for freezing Superbowls solid.

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Daffodils, like most Texas residents, are a little naive and a little too ready to think only good things can happen to them because they are white and relatively wealthy and very Republican, living in the State at the center of the universe.

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Then the second one pops out.  Like any other Texans, two together make the average IQ in the room drop.  Opinions get tossed back and forth to snowball into masses of prejudice against Mexicans crossing the border, too many black folks, too many people on food stamps eating up all the profits, and other massively bright blossoms of bigotry.  Sometimes they watch Fox News together and get really dangerous.  But fortunately, when two or more fear-charged brain-cells come in close proximity to each other (a feat that requires at least five Republicans) they begin to develop an electro-magnetic sixth sense and begin to perceive truth on the far perimeter.

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The forecast in North Texas for this coming week is for a strong chance of severe winter weather (for North Texas that is the code for a slight chance of snow).  So, I got a good laugh at daffodil expense.  But, I guess I don’t really hope they die an icy death.  I’m just grumpy because sometimes my life just doesn’t progress very well.

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January 9, 2024 · 2:01 am

The Barbie Shelf

Goofy-guy doll collector, me, will now give you a grand tour of the Barbie Shelf.  This is a place in my home that was originally created by the previous owners of the house.  It was a place in the upstairs play room apparently meant for the things that needed to be kept out of little girls’ reach.  Maybe pampers and baby wipes.  Cleaning supplies.  And possibly toys that were not to be broken immediately and had to be regulated.  I don’t know why else you would grace a playroom with a shelf up near the ceiling and above the only door into the room.  It was, however, perfect for the plastic people who were destined to take it over as their own.

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It begins above the bedroom door.  My wife has a thing about keeping her dolls mint in box.  She has more of an eye to their value as collectible investments.  The fashion Barbie nestled above the door in her box is a recreation of a 1962 doll that was reissued in 1999.  You can also see the Teacher Barbie that the Princess once de-boxed and played with.  And there you can also see the start of the Wizard of Oz collection.  There are little munchkin dolls and the Ken doll dressed as the Cowardly Lion in the picture.

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In front of Dorothy and Glinda from Oz, you see some of the recycled Goodwill Barbies that I bought naked and abandoned, cleaned and dressed, washed and tried to brush out their hair.  One of them had some marker on her face that had to be soaked off with secret sauce to restore a more human look.  The one in the middle is a 1980’s Asian Barbie.  There is also a Cowgirl Barbie wearing an extra gun belt from a CA Lone Ranger set.

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The kids are protected by Eustace the purple pottery dragon who was fired in my mother’s kiln during the height of her doll-making hobby and painted by me.  The kids here include a tiny Tommy doll, three Skippers from the early 70’s, and Hermione from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  You can see the Scarecrow and the Tin Man in the back, and there’s also Goodwill Barbie that for some odd reason has purple hair.

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Ricky (a 1960’s boy toy for Skipper) sits with Ashley Olsen between more recycled Goodwill Barbies.  1980’s Skipper is trying to push poor roller-skate Barbie off the shelf.

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My newest My Little Pony in mutant almost human form, Rainbow Dash the Equestria girl, is the blue doll in the middle here.  Mary-Kate Olsen can be seen in the Blue dress.  All you can see of Britney Spears here are her legs and feet, probably a safety feature of this tour.  The topless ballerina Barbie is wearing a jacket, but I could not close it on her extra large Barbie mammaries.  Princess Jasmine, my daughter’s somewhat beat-up favorite begins Disney Princess Row.

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Li Shang is still mint in box, but Mulan isn’t even on the shelf any more.  Some of Mom’s dolls got played with by the Princess.  Mulan lost her hair.  There is one American Girl doll here, bought at a yard sale for 25 cents, but I found a dress to fit her at Walmart in a sale bin.  Unfortunately I can’t name her correctly yet and she is barefoot like most of the Goodwill dolls.

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Almost to the end of the shelf, you can now see Apple Jack and Twilight Sparkle, my other two mutant pony girls, discovered at an After-Christmas Sale at Toys-R-Us.  They are standing on Grandma Beyer’s home bingo set from the 1930’s, and Disney Princesses are lined up behind them.

20150112_145808At the tail end of the shelf you will see Twilight Sparkle again to take the focus off poor 1980’s nudist Skipper (I robbed her of her clothes for one of the older, more rare Skippers that are worth a bit more to collectors).  Seated between is Asian Rock n Roll Barbie (Leah actually).  You may have noticed I am careful not to over-identify any of the members of the collection.  I got taken to task on E-Bay about descriptions of which Barbie was which once.  There are people out there much more rabid about doll collecting than I.  The difference between a 1980’s Butterfly Tattoo Barbie and an Anniversary Edition Malibu Barbie can get you challenged to a duel… with rapiers… in France.  I had to talk him into balloons and blunderbusses (an idea borrowed from Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines), and I lost.  I had to settle for the price offered even though my own research suggested I was not wrong.  (Well, okay, maybe I didn’t really go through with the duel thing, but the argument was just as intense and just as silly as that.)

So that is my long-winded essay on the essentials of the Barbie Shelf.  I will be looking at it a lot for the next few years since it is in the room I am using as my bedroom.  (Not in perfect health, I needed a room that I could completely seal up at night in order to breathe better.)  I really didn’t think I could pull off 500 words about this one goofy shelf in the house, but I now realize that I have nearly reached 900.

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December 6, 2023 · 2:16 am

The Rules for Collecting

20141207_150302  Oh, no… My secret is out.  I am a doll collector.  (Wait, wasn’t I supposed to claim they are “action figures” so that I can get away with being a man who, at the age of nearly 60, still plays with dolls?”)  I got started down this dark path back in 1965 when my parents bought me a G.I. Joe sailor for my ninth birthday.  It was the beginning of an addiction that has dogged me even down to this very day.

There are some things that just aren’t easy to admit to, like being gay, or being a socialist, or being a werewolf.  Well, I am not gay and I am not a socialist, so don’t worry about that.  Those are not really terrible things to be when it comes right down to it.  I have friends that are gay, friends that are socialists, and friends that are… um…  well, enough about those things.  I am writing about the terrible scourge of doll collecting.  In order to control such a rare and debilitating disease, I had to come up with a set of rules that would keep me from becoming a penniless hobo living in a cardboard refrigerator box in an alley with thousands of Barbie dolls.  So let me explain the sacred rules that have kept me at least partially sane for almost fifty years.

Rule #1;  Thou shalt only collect and obsess over twelve-inch dolls and action figures.  That allows for literally thousands of choices to pursue, and rules out the many size variations like the three-inch G.I. Joe’s and the three-inch Star Wars figures and all the Mego eight-inch superheroes who were everywhere in the Seventies and Eighties, but now are rare and expensive.

Rule #2; Thou shalt not collect and obsess over dolls and figures that cost more than twenty dollars.  This is the poverty prevention rule that keeps an obsession from breaking the bank and wreaking havoc throughout the rest of my life.  I have only broken this rule on rare occasions for hard to acquire dolls or figures, and most of those were actually presents paid for by somebody else.  I can blame the exceptions mostly on people who know about my weakness and exploit it for their own personal reasons… hopefully because they just like to make me happy.

Rule #3;  Thou must seeketh the lost and forlorn doll and redeem it from destruction.  Whenever I can, I look for dolls at Goodwill stores and yard sales.  I have bought a ton of naked and sometimes broken Action Man, Barbie, Max Steel, Ken, and G.I. Joe dolls.  I then try to find or make clothes for them.  My daughter went through her Barbie period in a most destructive manner.  She didn’t merely discard dolls and Disney princesses, she beheaded, dismembered, disrobed, and chewed them.  I have rescued and repaired many of them, but only after securing her promise that she doesn’t want to play with them or eat them any longer.  I should note, though, that I no longer acquire dolls in this way, now that she is middle school aged and wouldn’t be caught dead with a doll.

Rule #4;   Thou shalt not let your daughter be the the only one who has fun pulling them apart, but you will put them back together again in ways that make them into something new.

So, these are the sacred rules of collecting which shall not be violated in the pursuit of this weird religion, the bringing together of a multitude of dolls.

That is my “Enterprise Collection” above.  Specifically the “Original Series Enterprise Collection”.  Look more closely.

20141207_150408   Spock is holding a Vulcan harp-thingy (whose name I won’t quote here because I don’t want to seem too much like a Trekkie… and besides, I forgot what it is called and am too lazy to look it up again… What can I say?  I’m old.)  Kirk is wearing a Wrath of Khan movie uniform.

This green Barbie doll is a Goodwill rescue turned into a green Orion dancing girl with paint, sequins, material from a quilting project, and a hot glue gun.  20141207_150449

20141207_150510  Uhura was the hardest member of the team to track down and acquire.  After Kaybee Toys went out of business, I had to turn to the internet to get hold of this beauty.  I also had to pay $24.

You may also have noticed that Sulu is missing from my Original Series set.  Well, I’m still working on that one.  But I do owe a debt to J.J. Abrams for making a new movie version of Star Trek and inspiring a new set of twelve inch dolls.

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And let me not forget Rule #5, the most important rule…  Thou shalt play with the dolls you collect.

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September 8, 2023 · 12:44 am

Toys

A new doll bought to combat depression. Part of a collection of Tinkerbell fairy dolls.

A new doll bought to combat depression. Part of a collection of Tinkerbell fairy dolls.

I have basically written an awful awful lot about my toys.  (The awful is repeated on purpose because I have been having a really awful time this week for reasons I will post about if I survive them).  And there is a reason a retired old man who seems to be rotting away into a second childhood is so obsessed with toys.  Playing is my primary goal for every day right now because darkness is closing in and, while play for children is practice for life in the future, play for an old man can be the reanimation of all the good things in life.

A Lego steam engine and a 1000-piece puzzle that my wife bought me to cheer me up.

A Lego steam engine and a 1000-piece puzzle that my wife bought me to cheer me up.

I have been a toy-maker and a toy-restorer as a part of my over-all quest to be an artist.  I even made some money with an online e-Bay store where I sold collectibles and restored toys.  I bought toys from Goodwill and re-sale stores, repaired them and cleaned them, and sold them for twice the sum I bought them for.  I also made a few porcelain dolls in a kiln I bought in the 1990’s when my mother and I became porcelain doll-makers.  I would show you some of my babies, but the real live children have managed to break all the dolls except for a couple my mother made.  (Well, toys are made to be played with, right?)  But I do still have many of the repaired and cleaned toys that I either didn’t sell or couldn’t bring myself to part with.

Toys in every corner of the house, dang it!

Toys in every corner of the house, dang it!

I have also been a model railroader since childhood, spending countless hours building tunnels and repainting rolling stock, and making buildings and scenery from kits and plaster.  I haven’t rebuilt my layout since moving north away from South Texas, but maybe I will get to that too in my retirement and second childhood.

I do still have some trolley street scenes on the tops of book cases.

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And toys serve as memory objects.  They can do magic with time and space.  I have saved many of my toys from childhood.  Toys were precious and mostly Christmas and birthday gifts.  I learned to save and salvage them because they treated me well, and… well, I owed them the same in return.  My own children were not like that.  They loved toys to pieces and even sometimes ate them, to a point where many of them were un-fixable junk.  But toys bring things back to life from the long-gone past.  Take for instance the toy in this next picture;

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No, I don’t mean the baby doll.  He grew up and joined the Marine Corps.  I mean the stuffed white tiger in the background. That was the first toy I ever bought for baby Dorin.  And it is still with us, though not as fluffy and pretty as it was in the picture.  My daughter, the Princess, inherited it and christened it “Baby Tiger”.  That is, of course, still its name to this very day.  I look at it and see all three of them… my super-destructo toy-flinging and clockwork-wrecking children.  And it is the toys that we have all played with that still link us all together even though they are almost grown.

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August 15, 2023 · 12:45 am

Conversations With the Ghost of Miss M…

DSCN5148Beneath the old cottonwood tree there once stood a one-room school house.  My mother went to school there as a girl, a short walk from home along the Iowa country road.  Misty mornings on a road between cornfields and soybean fields can often conjure up ghosts.

I took this morning walk with the dog while I was visiting my old Iowegian home, and I was writing my fictional story Magical Miss Morgan in my head, not yet having had time to sit down and write.  I was reflecting on times long past and a school long gone, though Miss Morgan’s story is really about my own teaching experience.  Miss Morgan is in many ways me.  But I am not a female teacher.  I am a goofy old man.  So, why am I writing the main character as a female?

Well, the ghosts from the old school house heard that and decided to send an answer.

Miss Mennenga was my third grade and fourth grade teacher from the Rowan school.  The building I attended her classes in has been gone for thirty years.  Miss M herself has long since passed to the other side.  So when she appeared at the corner…  Yes, I know… I have said countless times that I don’t believe in ghosts, but she had the same flower-patterned dress, the glasses, the large, magnified brown eyes that could look into your soul and see all your secrets, yet love you enough to not tell them to anyone else.  Suddenly, I knew where the character of Miss Morgan had actually come from.  I also realized why I was drawn to teaching in the first place.  Teachers teach you more than just long division, lessons about the circulatory systems of frogs, and the Battle of Gettysburg…  They shape your soul.

“You remember getting in trouble for doing jokes in class when you were supposed to be studying your spelling words?”

“Yes, Miss M, but I didn’t make any noise.. they were pantomime jokes that I stole from watching Red Skelton on TV.”

“But you pulled your heart out of your chest and made it beat in your hand.  You had to know that was going to make the boys smirk and the girls giggle.”

“I did.  But making them happy was part of the reason God put me there.”

“But not during spelling.  I was trying to teach math to fourth graders.  You interrupted.”

“You made that point.  I still remember vividly.  You let me read the story to the class out loud afterwords.  You said I needed to use my talent for entertaining to help others learn, not distract them from learning.”

“I was very proud of the way you learned that lesson.”

“I tried very hard as a teacher to never miss a teachable moment like that.  It was part of the reason that God put you there.”

“And I did love to hear you read aloud to the class.  You were always such an expressive reader, Michael.  Do you remember what book it was?”

“It was Ribsy, by Beverly Cleary.   How could I have forgotten that until now?  You made me love reading out loud so much that I always did it in my own classes, at every opportunity.”

I remembered the smile above all else as the lingering image faded from my view through the eyes of memory.  She had a warm and loving smile.  I can only hope my goofy grin didn’t scare too many kids throughout my career.

10931430_1392374101067123_2624334665191497015_n I needed a post for 1000 Voices that was about reconnecting with someone.  I could’ve used any number of real life examples from everything that has happened to me since poor health forced me to retire from teaching  I could’ve written any number of things that would not make me feel all sad and goopy about retiring and would not make me cry at my keyboard again like I am doing now… like I did all through that silly novel I wrote… even during the funny parts.  But I had to choose this.  A debt had to be paid.  I love you, Miss M… and I had to pay it forward.

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August 12, 2023 · 1:00 am

My Mother’s Dolls

Tom Sawyer without the straw hat, as created by Lois Beyer

Tom Sawyer without the straw hat, as created by Lois Beyer

You may already know about my doll-collecting mania.  You may have already called the mental health people to come take care of the problem, and they just haven’t arrived at my door yet with the white coat that has the extra long sleeves.  But you may not know that my mother is a doll-maker and has something to do with my doll-collecting hoarding disorder.

In the early 1990’s my mother and I put our money together and bought a kiln while we were visiting my sister’s family out in California.  It wasn’t the most expensive model, but it wasn’t the cheapest, either.  We both had enough experience with ceramics that we didn’t want to buy a burning box that was merely going to blow our porcelain projects to kingdom come.  Mother had doll-making friends in Texas who taught her about firing greenware and glazing and porcelain paint and all the other arcane stuff you have to know to make expensive hand-made dolls.  Now, honestly, at the start we could’ve made some money at it selling to seriously ill doll collectors and other kooks, but we were not willing to part with our early art, and by the time we were ready to do more than just have an expensive hobby, everyone who would’ve paid money for the product was making their own.  So dreams of commercial success were supplanted by the hobbyist’s mania that made more and more charming little things to occasionally display at the county fair.

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The two dolls I have left to share on my blog from that era were both crafted by my mother.  She lovingly fired the porcelain body parts, painted the faces by hand, and created the wardrobe on her Singer sewing machine.  I made some dolls too, but never with the wondrous craft and care that made my mother’s dolls beyond compare.

Tom Sawyer was originally a boy doll who was supposed to be able to hold a model train in his hands.  My mother had the pattern for the little engineer’s uniform and hat that she would use on another doll instead.  He is named after the Tom Sawyer clothing pattern that my mother bought and sewed together to dress him in.  He has a cloth and stuffing body underneath his clothes together with porcelain head, hands, and bare feet.

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The other doll I have left to brag unctuously about is a doll named Nicole after the niece my wife and I have whom this doll bares a striking resemblance to.  She displays a beautiful little girl’s sun dress with quilted accent colors that my mother sewed from scratch with the help of a pattern she was truly fond of and used more than once.

These dolls were gifts to my wife and I, presented shortly after my mother bought out my share of the kiln when she retired and moved back to the frosty land of the Iowegians.  I haven’t kept them as thoroughly dusted and cobweb-free as they deserve because I have been a somewhat lazy and slovenly son… but I do love them almost as much as (and sometimes more depending on recent behavior) my own children.  (After all, porcelain kids rarely make a mess, overspend allowances, or hog the television too much.)

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July 6, 2023 · 2:28 am

Spotted Trains

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I have had a practically life-long fascination with trains.  Where did that come from?  It came from a Methodist minister who once upon a time saved my life.

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Reverend Louis Aiken (in the cowboy hat) was a lover of HO model trains, as well as country music… and, of course, God.

My best friend growing up was a PK, a preacher’s kid.  And as we hung out and played games and got into imaginatively horrible trouble, we invariably wound up in the basement of the parsonage where his father kept his HO train layout.   I learned lessons of life in that basement in more than one way.  I have to explain all of that somewhere down line.  But for now, I have to limit the topic to what I learned about trains.  They are a link to our past.  They are everywhere. And they do far more for us than merely make us cuss while sitting and endlessly waiting at the railroad crossing.

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When visiting Dows, we absolutely had to stop and take pictures at the train station.

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This is, by my best guess, an SD40 locomotive parked at the restored train station in Dows, Iowa.

Spotting trains to take pictures of, gawk at, and totally make cow-eyes over has become a way of life to me.  When visiting Iowa, especially Mason City, Iowa, we always have to stop at the engine on display in East Park.

When I was a kid, this old iron horse was not fenced in to protect it from kids, weather, and other destructive forces.  Now, however, it is fully restored and given its own roof.  This is a 2-8-2 steam engine with two little wheels in front, eight big wheels in the middle, and two little wheels at the back (not counting wheels on the coal tender).  I have ridden on trains pulled by such a behemoth.  I love to watch the monkey gears grind on the sides of the wheels forcing steam power into the surge down the tracks.  And I can’t help being a total train nut.  Of course I don’t deny being more than one kind of nut.  But being a mixed nut is another post for another day.

 

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July 3, 2023 · 2:18 am

The Magic of Pez

In 1927 in the mythical land of Austria, where they seem to know how to make candy… a condensed form of peppermint was created in a lozenge form and then placed into a plastic toy dispenser.  The spells that were cast to make this magical item probably had nothing to do with toad warts and bat wings and eye of newt.  It has more to do with Mickey Mouse, then Katzenjammer Kids, and Marvel Super Heroes.  I have been caught under the spells of a PEZ fixation since childhood.  I remember begging for a Bugs Bunny dispenser in Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines when I was probably six years old.  My parents wisely said no hundreds of times when I was a kid.  Who wanted to spend a nickel on a penny’s worth of candy?  Just for a Pez dispenser.  If they ever caved to my begging, even once, I don’t still have the dispenser.  But now I am supposedly a responsible adult.  I have money.  Well, I used to have money before I spent it on collecting PEZ dispensers.  I can’t even eat the the stupid candy.  I have diabetes.  So I feed the candy to my kids and risk giving them diabetes.

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Here, my minion Stuart is showing off my Avengers collection.  It took him nearly thirty minutes to line these six dispensers up so that they were all standing at once.  The Hulk kept falling on him repeatedly.

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I am proud of my Toy Story collection.  I had to go to some lengths to find some of these (particularly Slinky Dog and Rex).

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Disney Princesses were easy.  Both at Walmart and Toys R Us they were all grouped together on the Disney hooks.

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The Muppets were also grouped together with the Disney Pez.

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Winnie the Pooh is Disney, too.  I got some of these on discount at Toys R Us.  I still need Piglet and Owl… and Christopher Robin.  I don’t have an unbroken Minnie Mouse either.  I had small children when I first started collecting these, and now I have fat children and a lot of empty Pez dispensers.

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My Star Wars collection seems to be evil Pez dispensers and Yoda.

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And poor Stuart is getting tired of standing up Pez dispensers, so I will end here without having shown you all of my PEZ dispensers.  Besides, I have reason to keep the newest dispensers a secret from my minion.

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July 1, 2023 · 1:23 am

Cooking More Futzbatter

minions6“What’s this with the made up words thing?  You can’t just make up words!”

“Why not?  I’m an English teacher.  Who better to make up words?”

“But you are making up nonsense words, and using them to make fun of Iowegians!  That’s, like, racist or something!”

“Iowegians is a made up word.  It is a play on Norway, Ioway, and Norwegian… and because a lot of white people in Iowa are of Scandahoovian descent.”

“See what I mean?  Racist!  Scandahoovian makes fun of people of Norse descent.  That is totally unacceptable!”

“I don’t see it that way.  I think we Iowegians should own it.   You know, like the way Texas rednecks are proud to be called rednecks.  I think that’s far more racist than saying Iowegian or Scandahoovian.”

“Why are we even talking about this?  Why couldn’t you have just posted more about your goofy flowers?  You have a lot more flower pictures you could use.”

“Yesterday was just a scrapbook sort of entry.  I wanted to post a variety of different things to fill space and waste time.  My writing goals were already completed for the day yesterday.  My novel is at 39,565 words right now.”

“But why did you have to make up gibberish words?  Don’t you know enough real words?”

“My Uncle Everett used to use Foobah when he was around the womenfolk so he didn’t say the word he was really thinking and offend Grandma Beyer.  That kinda makes it a real word.  And you’ve heard me say Futzbatter before.  It is a word like Paffooney… something I have used enough that you know what it means without even asking.”

“But what gives you the right to make up words?”

“What gave William Shakespeare the right?  Or Lewis Carroll?  Remember Jabberwocky?”

“But they were famous writers.  They probably earned that right.”

“I’m a writer too.  Are you saying I shouldn’t do what great writers do?”

“But your not a great…  Republican… yes, I meant to say Republican.”

“I’m not a Republican at all.  I’m an independent liberal.  I’m a progressive.  I believe we need to change things to make the world a better place for all of us.  Using new words and changing the language can’t be that bad a thing, can it?”

“We aren’t talking about politics!  We’re talking about you making up weird-sounding goofus-doofus words and using them like they actually mean something!  You can’t love the language and change it at the same time!”

“Why not?  You just did.”

“I did?  How?”

“What does goofus-doofus mean?”

“OH!  Darn it!  Don’t you see what you are doing to me with all your nonsense?  You’re making me talk funny too!”

“Speaking of funny talking, do you want to see the new Minions movie with me this afternoon?  It is playing at 3:25 at the Webb-Chapel Cinemark 17.  There’s a lot of funny talking in that.”

“Dang it!  You just posted the time and place you are planning to be.  What if that lunatic Winchuk boy decides he wants to use the information to get even with you for his entire seventh-grade year?”

“No chance of that.  He can’t read… or tell time.  He had me for a teacher.”

At that point the logical left side of my brain doubled up both of his fists and belted the creative right side of my brain in the chin as hard as he could.  Of course, that didn’t hurt at all, because both of his fists are metaphorical.  What a futzing foobah!

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