Monday Miscellany: A Childhood Down the Drain

Today we put our eldest two children on the bus to elementary school. Then my wife took the cat to the vet; the cat is still there. The vet has to have a urine sample before he can diagnose her problem; she has a shy bladder. I asked my wife exactly how one goes about getting a urine sample from a cat, but she could not enlighten me. Our fish, Goldie II, died just a couple of weeks ago, and we hope that the same fate is not in store for our dear Kitty.

The kids, however, did come home. Both of the children had good first days. P, our eldest, had a rough year in first grade so I was surprised and pleased when he told me that it was fun and that he liked second grade. It has been entertaining and somewhat disconcerting hearing the conversations that he has had with his younger sister over the past couple of months. She is starting kindergarten and has been insatiably curious. His answers were generally negative. Fortunately, his negativity had not had too much of an impact upon her, and he has tried to be genuinely helpful to her this week.

4boydad aptly described my more melancholy sentiments concerning the first day of school in the last two paragraphs of a post that hooks you with a very funny story then gaffs you in the gut with the knowledge that you too will one day long to return to the heady days of pulling your little one's precious possessions out of an unflushed toilet.


4boydad's story reminded me of another long-ago Lego lost-at-sea disaster story:
Stephen was one of my worst enemies during my elementary years. He lived directly across the street from me. We would sit on our respective driveways and yell insults at each other. I did it because he was different and everyone else treated him that way. He did it because that must have been the way he figured people talked to each other.

Eventually, at my mom's prompting, we became best of friends. Our friendship was not without its setbacks and conflicts. Early in our friendship I called him over to play in the sprinkler. Almost as soon as I set down the phone I saw him running down his driveway to our front yard where our sprinkler put up a valiant fight against the summer's heat. Strange, I thought, he is fully clothed. He began to undress. Perhaps, I thought, his swimsuit is under his clothes. As soon as it was clear that his swimsuit was not, in fact, under his clothers, he began to frolic in the sprinkling drops with nary a stitch of clothing on his body. My father and my sister looked up slack-jawed from the planting in which they were engaged; we three witnesses were struck mute. I stood back on the driveway, unsure how to handle this unexpected turn of events. We were saved when his mother frantically swooped down the driveway with a towel, scooped him and his clothes up, and returned him to his house. I grew up a little that day; I don't think I ever played in the sprinkler again.

I digress. It was, I think, Stephen who got me interested and then addicted to collecting and building with Lego Bricks and Toys. We became obsessed with categorizing our Lego Bricks as common, rare, or extremely rare. We bartered with each other and begged our parents for the latest set with the latest rare piece. Then came Timmy.

Timmy was the neighborhood Eddie Haskell. He was several years older than Stephen and I. He is the first person I remember meeting when we moved into our new house. He was the one that got me to kiss Sarah. Sarah was his younger sister, and she was my age. He liked to watch us kiss. He told us how the French kissed and suggested that the two us give it a try. He wanted to watch. Sitting on the camping trunk in my parent's garage, we tried it. Timmy was not present. I didn't kiss another girl for many years. Later, a kid named Paul gave me a bloody lip so Sarah slugged him.

I digress. Timmy came into possession of what was, he claimed, at the time, the rarest of rare Lego bricks: a 1x1 clear tile. He talked Stephen into trading several pounds of bricks for it. When Stephen told me about it, I told him that he got ripped off, but I was secretly jealous. He let me briefly look at it, but I don't remember if he let me hold it.

That night, when Stephen went for his evening bath, he did as was his wont: he gathered his favorite Lego bricks and took them into the bath with him. He took the 1x1 clear tile with him. It went down the drain and was never seen again.

When he told me about the tragedy the next day, I grew up a little more. Never again did I take my own Lego bricks into the bath without obsessively worrying about losing one. My paranoia became so acute that I soon gave up taking any Lego into the bath. After that, bathing became just another chore.

Peace
..._