The boxes are very nice too. Printed inside and out. I can't just throw them away.
Past season. Somehow they know I like pop-up cards. I get those. Nobody makes their own. Nobody even tries.
Here's the thing. One day I went card hunting for my mother.
I looked at thousands of cards. Possibly hundreds. Maybe a dozen.
Okay, fine. I looked at five cards.
The best card I could find, the most touching, the one that expressed myself the best was made for a family of negroid persuasion.
I almost bought it because it was the best.
And then I thought, you know, this could be taken the wrong way.
Eh, go for it.
No. Don't go for it.
Come on! Go for it. This is the best card.
No. There is a chance that my mother might misconscrew misconstrue that I am suggesting she is not Caucasian. There is a chance that she might not find this funny. I find it hilarious but I can never predict how women will respond. I don't know.
Goddamnit.
Probably the first time in my life that my better judgement ruled what I did.
Ew, I hate that better judgement to pieces.
I could make a card good as any of these. I can express a sentiment good as any of these. I have only to think of what I want to say. I have only to know what I feel. Find it. Find the real thing in my heart. Reach into my heart and grab the real thing and then say it. So I did.
I did that with my father too. What I said was real. Very real. And I know that he took his card around and showed his friends. I don't know what my mother did with her card but I do know the card to my father meant the world to him. Having his son understand him meant the world to him.
That led to pop-up cards but I didn't know what I was doing. Still, the naïvety of them, the unprofessionalism, the stupidity of them, the poorly done art, the rapidity of them, the carelessness of them, charmed the pants off of people. They saved their cards. Forever. They still have them. When they died, other people took them.
The first ones were very poorly done. "Happy Berth Day" with an art deco ship on the front and sailors in bunks dropping down. I didn't know how to make that work so it was executed imporoperly but it still worked. A jazz band of insects on flowers playing different instruments. They looked totally stupid and quite funny. An Egyptian gathering an armful of insane flowers from a private garden. Just made up silly stupid crap. The cards were well received because people understood that I put thought and effort into them and I didn't bother to scan hundreds of cards in a display to find just the right thing, or something wry or clever, like everyone else does.
I could give people books about how to make pop-up cards.
I could give people books about how to take textural colorful crap and make artistic cards.
And that will free them from scanning thousands of ordinary cards looking for something worse than what they can do for themselves.
Snowy is their new dog. He loves me too.
If this box contains an ugly Christmas sweater, I'm not going to wear it.
Yes I will.
No I won't.
Yes I will.
No I won't.
Yes I will.
No I won't.
Yes I will.
No I won't.
I'll wear it to sleep in.
Fine. Until I get hot and pull it off.
Phew. Thank God. It's a veritable treasure chest of ornaments and toys and candy and not an ugly Christmas sweater. You never know with boys. It could have been anything.
Solar activated. I already have three from Easter two years ago and they only stop dancing at night. They remind me of the boys. They remind me of my other brother and me fascinated with the dunking duck in shop window in Scranton Pa. We stood there mesmerized for hours. Possibly minutes. Just watching the duck dip its beak in water and that causing its weight to change and swivel out of the water until it evaporated, or something, possibly a temperature change, possibly distribution of the water caused it to dip its beak back into the water. I think it had something to do with temperature. This was in the year of our Lord, 1959.
Oh! Insatiable birdies.
Delicate glass. They do not light up.
Tiny Christmas trees with snow in bottles that light up.
It took a long time to figure out how to turn on Dancing Santa. You can feel the box mechanism under his clothes but cannot feel any on/off switch. There is something that could be a switch in his crotch but that is too rude a placement for a Christmas toy. His belt buckle is the best choice. But no. And this symbol on his boot could be anything, just a tag.
1 comment:
A Trumpy bear, as opposed to a Trumpy Bear.
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