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Life, actually…

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THE GOOD TIMES BEFORE YESTERDAY

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The double-clasped wooden treasure box is practically invisible. It is invisible because it is in plain sight. I see it so often I no longer see it.

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But once every handful of years, the double-clasped wooden treasure box beckons, calls attention to itself, dares me to unclasp and lift the lid.

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Here I am this morning, doing just that.

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I already know what is inside the box, but gazing directly at the objects within refreshes my memory, teases me with snippets of childhood adventures.

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There, right on top of the box’s other contents, is a stack of Topps trading cards, squirreled away when I was eleven.

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No, these are not sports trading cards. They are trading cards designed for those of us who were useless on the playing fields of competition. These cards were made for us, the invisible unathletic unpopular clumsy-but-smart kids who maneuvered  through life by finding our own pleasures.

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My calisthenics included re-reading and memorizing the historical and biographical information on the back of each Topps Look ‘n See card.

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Back then, they were called bubble gum cards, packaged with a red cellophane decoder, a modest slab of pink barely-chewable gum, and a beautifully painted portrait of our heroes of the day, one per card per chaw per history lesson.

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Here are some of them right in front of me. Jules Verne, Sitting Bull, Jesse James, Cleopatra, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Washington Carver…and on and on. At the age of eleven I knew something about each of these and dozens more, long before we studied them in school.

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I could act smarter than I was, which was helpful to an otherwise unrenowned sub-teen who at the very least needed to spout off smart thoughts designed to impress others when they were not obsessively watching sports, participating in sports, and thumbing through their Topps sports cards.

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At least I knew who H.G. Wells and Mahatma Gandhi were, even if you didn’t.

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Cheap thrills for what we now call a Nerd.

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And another thing—these famous characters of history were on equal footing in my imagination. Francis Scott Key and Jefferson Davis and Ponce de Leon are worthy of attention, at least for 30 seconds each.

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Ironically, they rest inside the wooden box as compatriots. At least they no longer disagree or wage war or gripe.

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Oh, if you are worried that my childhood deprived me of the need to adore famous sports figures, just relax. There is one sportsman in the Topps collection, just one.

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Babe Ruth.

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In my eleven-year-old world Babe Ruth was worthy of attention. Not because of his considerable prowess, but because there was something magical about him. In the imaginations of us kids, Babe Ruth was mythological, the greatest icon of all. I have no idea why…he just was.

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There you have it. The confessions of a Topps Look ‘n See non-sports bubble gum trading card kid. A kid who has grown from wimpy sub-teen to become wimpy octogenarian.

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An overgrown kid who still dreams of picking up a wooden stick, pointing to a certain part of a crowd-filled stadium, and whapping a homer right on target

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 © Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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TO TELL THE TOOTH

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THSHTH! THSHTH!

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Let me get this as right as I can…it’s difficult to spell the sound that my father used to make whenever he was caught without a toothpick.

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You’ll just have to get me to make that sound for you next time we meet, because THSHTH! is as close as I can come to reproducing it. That sound occurs when you suck air between two adjacent teeth in your mouth, but only when that space between those teeth has a food particle that needs to be cleared away.

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When my father made the THSHTH! sound, we knew he was feeling satisfied, that he was sated from a good home-cooked meal. He’d be driving along on the way to visit my Uncle Pat McGee in Peterson, Alabama, and I’d be in the front seat. In the rear seat would be my brother Tim. Every time my father made the THSHTH! sound, Tim would loudly imitate it.

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To this day, I don’t know whether Dad was so used to making the sound that he didn’t know he was being mocked, or whether he was the most tolerant man in the universe. Any ordinary person might have pulled off the side of the road and popped Tim one, but Dad just refused to acknowledge Tim’s noises.

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This, of course, just egged Tim on. He’d do additional things in the back seat, such as imitate the expressions and comments that our neighbor Edgar Beatty would come out with. He mimicked phrases that Uncle Adron Herrin used—in exact imitation, by the way. I never was good at imitations, so to this day I marvel at Tim’s uncanny ability to create humor out of just about anything he finds funny or scary.

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All through the years, I stop short when anybody around me makes anything like that THSHTH! noise—and, of course, lots of people do.

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Everybody seems to have their little sounds and oral punctuations that unconsciously pop out. Hums, sighs, whistles, grunts, tooth-clicking, neck-cricking, tsking, snorting, groaning, hacking, swallowing loudly, lip-popping, gurgling, sneezing, throat-clearing, sinus-blowing, whispering, muttering, and on and on.

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Wouldn’t it be horribly wonderful if we could get a group of people together, willing to reproduce their own personally-developed sounds, and perform some sort of symphony? A noisy pantomime representing all the daily little ejections of delight and frustration that emanate from us, all the little and big wordless pronouncements…we could perform them in such a way that the listener will be able to hear and appreciate—and even understand—the import and usefulness of these silly tiny things we utter.

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Those THSHTH! sounds my father made had great meaning and significance in our little neighborhood, and we the family could no more have done without them than without food.

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We silently knew those sounds were the assurances we received each day that for a few ticks in time, the head of the family was satisfied and happy with the moment, and, thus, so were we

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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AN ARMORY OF HAND-MADE QUILTS

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A childhood memory…

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I am as safe and snug as any kid could ever be.

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I know I am safe and secure because my body weighs twice as much as normal at this moment.

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My body is so heavy because it is covered with massively layered hand-made quilts and coverlets and sheets and blankets. I am immobile beneath these sweet-smelling shields, lying atop a padded mattress in the small bedroom of youth.

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The night is icy cold, but I am safe. That’s about all that matters at the moment.

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I have been lovingly hugged and tucked in, a Woody Woodpecker night light secures the perimeter, a Treasure Island comic book hides beneath the mattress next to a camouflage-green Boy Scout flashlight. In case of insomnia, be prepared.

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I feel cozy and burrowed. I take for granted the care and nurturing of family. I assume tonight is going to spawn forever nights like this. I presume immortality.

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This cocooned moment makes me feel nothing bad can possibly happen. It’s as though the universe is wrapped around me, making its limits clear. There is no way I can fall out of bed, blow away in a storm, no way I can become untethered.

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Now and then, throughout life, I recall this momentary feeling. If only I could carry this assuredness, this bravery, with me. I could strut with confidence, brush aside doubts and demons, pass along this bluster to others, become some kind of kindly example.

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I hold fast to memories like this because sometimes they are the only grab bars I can depend on.

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I need to be prepared for days when I forget how safe I felt that night beneath the gentle armor of love and quilting

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 © Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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ONLY ONE PERCHANCE PER DREAM, PLEASE

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How would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar?

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Long, long ago we Down South village playmates used to dream about doing things like star-swinging and moonbeam-toting.

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Dreams were our main source of entertainment. We daydreamed, night dreamed, imagined the impossible, explored the corners of the universe without moving an inch.

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Grownups respected our outrageous imaginations. They couldn’t ground us for thinking and dreaming, so they let us run wild inside.

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After all, they were kids like us just a couple of decades earlier.

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Grownups even understood that dreams could become nightmares at times. They were there to comfort us in the feverish wee hours of the morning.

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One nightmare:

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Cold steel-blue flames are swooping over a field across the street from our home, the field we play in each day.

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But in this nervous dream the fire does not produce heat. I am in the field, running through those cold steel-blue flames, trying to escape. But escape from what? Escape to where? How will I know when I’m safe from the flames? Since the flames are harmless, why am I running from them? Should I stop and embrace the flames, respect the flames, learn to live within the flames?

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I am panicky. I scream.

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I awaken to the humid world into which I was delivered just a few years ago.

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Cool hands check my brow. Large loving adults soothe me and tuck me in.

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My unfettered imagination is once again safely anchored, allowing me time to recuperate and prepare for capturing future moonbeams in jars.

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The moonbeams become fireflies, so I release them back to their world after a while. After all, they were here long before me. They will be here long after I myself become a dream.

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Maybe by then I’ll learn how to swing on a star

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© Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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