Here Comes Peter Cottontail - HIDE!

The words of the popular Easter song warning me that Peter Cottontail was hopping down the bunny trail could send me into a fit of hysterics as a child.  I didn’t care if hippity-hoppity Easter was on its way or not.  I wanted that dang rabbit to keep his distance.  I had a love/hate thing with ole Peter Cottontail.  I loved that he brought me a basketful of candy on Easter morning.  I hated that he would show up at the last place I’d expect to see him. 

I am not sure why this unjustified terror took hold of me, but I know where it started.  I'm not entirely sure it's unjustified.  Though completely accidental, the deeply seeded fear was planted at Jack’s Surplus, a discount store.  My dad called it Tokyo Jack’s.  I guess because most of the merchandise was made in Japan, or maybe it was cheaply made.  I’m really not sure, but I do know that was about my favorite place to shop.   It never benefited me much to go with my mom because she never bought me anything.  We’d roam the aisles while I made mental notes on what I’d ask Grandma Coleman to buy me the next time we shopped.

My favorite section was the shoes.  They had some of the greatest clogs anyone in Indiana could possibly lay eyes on.  And there were wedgies, too.  Grandma had taught me all about them because while I might have shared my love of dogs with my grandpa and my love of Spanish with my kindergarten teacher, Grandma knew a good pair of shoes when she saw them. 

I admired a pair of avocado green sling back wedgie clogs.  These shoes had it all, including a cork heel.    I would have to figure out a way to get grandma to take me to Jack's.   

My mom was the best mind reader in the world.  Never mind what they said about moms having eyes in the back of their heads.  If my mom had them, she didn’t need them because she somehow knew what I was thinking.  If she had a crystal ball and some scarves, she could have been a gypsy fortune teller.   Even without the accessories, she knew what I was up to. 

“Don’t you even think about having your grandma get those for you,” she said.  “You’re feet aren’t big enough, and you aren’t old enough.” 

It was useless to try to clue her in on how grandma showed me that you could take a piece of newspaper, ball it up, and put it in the toes of shoes if they were a little bit too big.  I’d done it all the time when I played dress up in her things.  It wouldn't be long until I could wear a woman's size 5 1/2, anyway.  Everyone said I was growing like weed. 

I could have made my argument, but a voice came over the speaker and caused me to stop and listen.

“Attention:  The Easter Bunny has arrived!” a cheerful voice sounded throughout the store. 

This was mom’s chance to lead me away from the shoes I didn’t need, but wanted.  “Let’s go see the Easter Bunny.” 

I don’t know what the voice was so happy about because he was scarier than my mental image of the devil who was going to load my parents up and take them off to hell since they didn't go to church (no dying required).   All the storybooks and cartoons I’d seen had made me think he was a cute and lovable sort who hopped around his bunny trail delivering chocolate rabbits and jelly beans. 

There had to be some mistake.  This guy was at least 15’ tall and was wearing bibbed overalls.  His fur was matted and crazy like a cat with mange or a dog that was in need of a good de-burring. 

“Go on, go see him,” my said and pushed me forward.

“No!” I screamed and ran the other direction.

“Oh, c’mon,” my mom urged. 

The rabbit didn’t speak, but just stared at me with those huge hollowed out eyes.  I couldn’t threaten to kick his big, vacant eyes out because someone had apparently beaten me to the punch. 

“He won’t hurt you,” my mom continued to urge.  "Kelly Kay." 

Yeah, that’s what they all say, I thought while my mom tried to coax me out from a rack of polyester pantsuits, promising me we could go home. 

The worst part was that he was stationed by the cash registers.  I felt him eyeing me with those huge empty eye sockets.  He looked like an Easter zombie.  I kept my eyes peeled should have make any sudden moves and leave his Easter area as my mom checked out. 

I never felt the same about Jack’s Surplus City.  Even when Grandma took me, she had to promise me that the Easter Bunny wasn’t there before I’d even get out of the car.  Not even the love of fashionable shoes could make me trust the place again. 

Everyone tried to convince me that it wasn’t the “real” Easter bunny that I saw.  In fact, they said it was a man dressed up like him.  He was just one of the Easter Bunny’s helpers.  I wasn’t buying it.  No one who loved children and delivering candy, and withstood the likes of Iron Tail in the cartoon would send something like that to Jack’s.  I didn’t care and no amount of convincing was going to work.  I did not, nor would I ever, trust that rabbit. 

Completely unassuming of any impending jeopardy, I later found myself at church for an Easter party.  I really didn’t want to go.  I would have been happy to stay home and color or play with my dolls. I'm sure my mom saw it as an opportunity for a break, so she loaded me up, and dropped me off.   

A lady used the feltboard and taught us about the very first Easter.  She put up a picture of a cave with a big rock against the doorway.  But since it was a good Friday for God, he sent angels to roll the rock away.  This made the angels happy because Jesus was his son, and had raisins.  Or something like that, anyway.  The details were sketchy, and I was too busy wondering how they paper stuck to the board without falling off. 

That was definitely something I needed, and I would ask Grandma C to get me one.  Maybe they had them at Jack’s, and I wanted one badly enough that I would risk seeing that scary rabbit if it meant I got a feltboard.  But then again, maybe I would tell Grandma to look the next time she was there.  The image of the rabbit who was a man pretending to be a rabbit picked by the real Easter Bunny still haunted me.  I had planned on staying in bed that Easter night, not taking any chances as to what I might see if I got up to get a drink of water and go to the bathroom.   

“Okay everyone,” the feltboard lady said as happy as the voice on the speaker in Jack’s, “We all have to hide now because the Easter Bunny is coming!” 

If there was never a real reason to be afraid, I now had one.  I might have been a scaredy-cat, but something told me it was bad news if you had to hide somewhere from something. 

They took us into the stairwell leading up from the church basement to the first floor and closed the door behind us.  I hunkered down on the steps to not risk being seen from the small window on the landing.  I was sure if the rabbit saw me that would be the end of me. 

Something translated in a most twisted way that day adding even more reasons to fear Peter Rabbit.  Okay, he was coming.  We were hiding.  Why would we hide from him unless we were in eminent danger?  This was not a good sign at all, and apparently, my paranoia was just.  The Easter Bunny was obviously wicked, as I had suspected. 

An older girl saw me crying and tried to make me feel better.  She told me that there was nothing to be afraid of, and unless she knew something I didn’t know, she had to be nuts. 

After the coast was clear, the lady tried to lure me back to the basement.  When I wouldn’t budge, and had drawn a crowd of the other grownups, she grabbed my wrist and dragged me down the last three steps.  Not only did I have great mistrust for a giant rabbit wearing overalls and sneakers, I came out of hiding for nasty malted robin eggs and some jelly beans, which were disgusting, too. 

As long as I had no in-person encounters with the Easter Bunny, all was fine.  I was torn, though, when Dad teased that Toby, our sheep dog, might chase off the Easter Bunny.  I didn’t know whether to cheer on my dog, or be upset that I might not get my allotment of chocolate. 

I never watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail, in the same light again.  When Peter Cottontail was pitted against the evil Irontail, the nasty, mean rabbit that sported a metal tail because he was ran over by a child on a tricycle, I no longer knew who to root for.  Peter Cottontail or Iron tail.  Hmm, it was the lesser of two evils, and at least Iron tail was supposed to be scary.  

The best I could do was to stay out of his way, and I hoped that he would do the same for me.  It didn’t stop me from double checking what month it was anytime we pulled up to Jack’s Surplus City or I was sent to church for some sort of party.  I wasn’t taking any chances. 

 

On Bob Ross, self-published writers, and Richard Simmons

Deserting the desert for home

Today, my husband and I celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary.  In celebration, here's an excerpt from my book, Four Eyes Were Never Better Than Two...and other observations. 

There’s something to be said for being young and in love.   

I could have been in the Arctic and it wouldn’t have mattered to me.  North Pole, South Pole, or Outer Mongolia - the destination didn’t matter.  I was eager to start my life with my soon-to-be husband who was in the Army stationed at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona.    

After driving 35 hours straight with my brother and his friend who were 18 years old at the time, I arrived at my new home in the middle of the night.  Separated only one month, I didn’t care that local stores sold t-shirts that said, “Sierra Vista, 14 miles from hell.”  Of course, I wouldn’t realize that the t-shirts weren’t kidding until the next morning when the sun rose. 

As I headed out the door to get something out of the van that night, he scared me to death when he yelled, “Don’t go outside without shoes on!”   

I stopped dead in my tracks.  Snakes?  Scorpions?  Toe-eating desert denizens?  As it turned out, sand burrs were the reason.  Picture a cocklebur with very sturdy, unforgiving thorns.  I was raised in Indiana.  While I hate to fuel the myth about barefooted hillbillies, I never wear shoes unless I am leaving the house with the intention of getting into the car.  But, the sand burrs made mosquitoes, poison ivy, and other bothersome weeds seem like nothing.   

Later, I only had to extract one from my foot before I relented.  Shoes were a desert requirement.  This made my feet sad.  One of my husband’s favorite claims is that he bought me my first pair of shoes since I’m a Hoosier and all and still look for the outhouse sometimes because indoor plumbing is a novelty to me.  In actuality, I started wearing the shoes I already owned because sand burrs weren’t the most pleasant thing to pull out of the bottom of my feet.  The brown blades of grass were the equivalent to strolling on a bed of razor blades, too.  Shoes were a necessity.  I felt sorry for a region whose inhabitants never realized the divine feeling of shade grass beneath the bare feet and between the toes.  I can’t imagine missing out on the ritual of sitting under a tree in the grass with a couple friends talking.  In AZ, one’s rump would not be forgiving.   

When the bright Arizona sun rose that next morning, not only did it illuminate the sky, but also my view of where I was going to spend the next three years.  I didn’t cry, but I think it was because I was experiencing some sort of climate shock and my tear ducts had yet to adjust.

  My view when I woke up the next morning.  I suppose it could have been worse, but I sure never got used to seeing mountains.  Indiana is rather flat.

 

My husband rented a house trailer before my arrival.  Buena Vista was the name of the trailer park.  The name translates into “Good Vista.”  Vista according to Webster’s:  a distant view through or along an avenue or opening; an extensive mental view (as over a stretch of time or a series of events). 

 

  The blazing hot concrete patio was often covered with the tiniest grasshoppers I've ever seen.  I'm surprised they didn't cook on it.  "I'm sorry, I can't leave because I'm being holed up in my home because of a grasshopper militia."

 

What an extensive mental view of the first place we lived together as husband and wife it’s left me.  I didn’t realize how bad Buena Vista really was back then.  It’s a very good thing I thrived on the newness of being in love because it is not some place I would return to willingly.     

My first question once I walked out the door the next morning was, “Why is the grass brown?” 

 “You have to water it,” he said.  “Except during monsoon season when it rains every day for a month.”   

During monsoon season, it was 120 degrees in the shade with 100% humidity.  Also, these rains washed the snakes out of the mountains into the valley where we lived.  Also, bears and mountain lions.  Well, if the National Guard that came down for their two-week training didn’t scare the latter out of the mountains.  I was hardly surprised when animal control extracted a brown bear from a tree around the corner.  When a nearby neighbor stepped on a rattlesnake as she went to her next door neighbor’s house to borrow sugar (honest to goodness, you can’t make things like that up) and was whisked off to the E.R., I treaded lightly and considered getting some combat boots as a precautionary measure.   

It did not take long for homesickness to set in.  The only friend I felt like I had was the maintenance man.  Heaven knows we saw enough of him between plugged toilets, swamp coolers that blew hot air, and gas leaks.  Swamp coolers, I learned, put moisture into the air.  I didn’t know what it was supposed to do.  I only knew it blew hot outside air at about 70 mph down that trailer’s hallway.  Sure, if I stood in the hallway, it blew the sweat off my forehead as it beaded.  They aren’t kidding when they say it’s hot in the desert and that it’s a dry heat.  It was often hard to tell that I’d sweated at all, except when signs of dehydration started to set in.  Apparently, our swamp cooler was not putting moisture into the air, hence the reason for the cyclone of hot air.  Once repaired, it helped cool things down a bit.  Except during monsoon season because the air was already full of moisture. 

Buena Vista wasn’t so muy buena.  After the plus sign appeared on a pregnancy test, we put in for on-post housing.  Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait long to move.  I didn’t care where it was.  We could have been in the middle of the firing range, and it had to have been better than Buena Vista and the trailer from the late 60s.  I didn’t miss my neighbors to our right who seemed to have some sort of communal living thing going on.  I bid a final farewell to the ones whose bedroom butted up to our bedroom at the end of the trailer after many sleepless nights of overhearing their fights and making calls to the police.   

Back home, I had friends and family.  There, I knew next to no one except a German girl across the street.  Sometimes her English left a lot to be desired, but we both were pregnant at the same time, so we bonded over that.  She didn’t seem very homesick.  I was so sad, and jealous, when they were being transferred and she went back home to Germany.  I missed sitting around in a group with her and her German friends while they all spoke their native tongue.  I missed being told, “Stick around us long enough, and you’ll be fluent in German.”  The only thing I was fluent in – counting down how many days we had left in the desert. 

I felt as lonely as this lone cactus somewhere on the route to Nogales, Mexico.

 

August 30, 1992 was our departure date.  I do often wonder how different it might have been if technology was then what it is now.  Back then, there was no such thing as email, text messages, or even free long distance.  Maybe email existed somewhere at that time, but I hadn’t heard of it.  I anxiously answered the phone those days as quickly as I could with the hopes of speaking to someone back home calling to chat.  I relied heavily on letter writing, which I loved, so that was one of the few advantages of living in the dark ages pre-Internet and free long distance.   

I suppose many sit around and have a good chuckle over the first place they lived when starting out.  While I think back and grimace, I do know there was one positive thing about the experience.  If our marriage survived Buena Vista, it can survive anything.   

The decision to leave Arizona brought about our first fight as husband and wife.  “You can stay,” I told my husband who’d been offered a civilian job there.  “The baby and I are going home to IN.”  It was a promise, not a threat, and he knew it.   

Several times a year, he reminds how close he’d be to retirement.  When the wind chill is below zero and the snow flies, he tells me it’s all my fault that we still aren’t in AZ where it doesn’t snow enough to count and you can celebrate Christmas in short sleeves.  I don’t take it personally, and seldom do I come close to having any regrets.  We’ve been back in IN for over twenty years now.  I must concur with the infamous words of Dorothy, there is no place like home.

 

Where did that come from?

I've been trying to post something at least weekly, but this week, our four year old granddaughter is staying with us.  Spongebob.  My Pretty Pony.  Or maybe it's My Little Pony.  I'm not sure, but she'll correct me when I get it wrong.  Rainbow Dash.  Paw Patrol.  Big girl bicycles.  Sidewalk chalk.  Bubbles.  Happy Meals.  Fuzzy pajamas.  Snuggles, cuddles, and hugs.  We're having a great week, but I think she might be one of those new super breeds of children who require so little sleep.  My kids napped up until the time they joined the Navy.  As I went to sleep last night, I was reacquainted with that totally exhausted feeling that I hadn't felt since my kids were that little.  You know, where you're just trying to stay awake long for bedtime.  I haven't had the urge to doze off in the recliner for eons. 

 

Anyway, here's an old, very old column from the archives of Off-Kelter, the column I wrote for ten years. 

 

***

 

I love a good mystery.  However, I would rather get my fill of suspense and intrigue by reading a book or watching a movie.  Instead, I play amateur detective on a daily basis.   

Objects disappear and reappear in the strangest places.  Case after mystifying case, I am constantly piecing together clues to try to figure out why these things happen.  I have yet to completely rule out a gremlin or poltergeist activity.  I will put something down, and five minutes later, it is missing.  Entire gallons of milk have disappeared from the refrigerator.  An axe that I’m not even sure was ours made a surprise appearance in the front yard.   

The bathroom is a haven for oddities.  I never know what I will find lurking in there.  Imagine my surprise when I opened the shower curtain to found two empty bottles of shampoo, a tube of oozing toothpaste, and a bicycle helmet in the tub.  Several days prior, I had found the helmet on the bathroom floor and tossed it into the toy box.   

Both boys had showered the night before.  While I had picked up wet towels and dirty clothes, I hadn’t peeked behind the curtain.  Befuddled, I pondered why the children were showering with toothpaste and protective headgear.  I was certain the shampoo bottles were nearly full, too.   

I have yet to solve that one.  I put the helmet away, and if it turns up in the bathtub again, then I will have to ask.   

The mystery of the junk drawer remains the biggest unsolved case in the kitchen.  Seven years ago, I started out with one junk drawer.  Its contents have now multiplied and migrated into two other drawers.  Things I didn’t even know I had seem to surface. 

I could be wrong, but it is my suspicion that the junk drawer is plotting to take over the entire kitchen.  I have found screwdrivers, nails, receipts, and hard candy mingling with the spoons and forks. 

Laundry seems to be a universal perplexity, and it is something I question more than anything else in this house.  I put clothes into the washer, transfer them to dryer, and as soon as I turn my back, the unexplainable happens. 

I was matching socks when I came across one that would fit a toddler.  How did it get in my basket?  The kids had cleaned out from under their bed earlier that week hauling four armloads of dirty clothes to the utility room.  I know it hadn’t been that long since they had last cleaned under their beds. 

Not only this tiny sock made me raise an eyebrow, though.  I found a pair of size 3T underwear in the wash.  It has been years and years since either child wore something so small.  Yet, there they were looking brand new.  The same day, my favorite black shirt came up missing and has yet to turn up anywhere.    

The greatest quandary without any explanation is missing objects that turn up months later in a desk drawer.  Although closely related to the junk drawer in the kitchen, the desk seems to be a refuge for things I need but cannot find.  Mysteriously, these items turn up later when I am scrounging for something else.   

Right now, the left desk drawer contains some strange things: a Christmas ornament my son made in 1998, a hairbrush that I’ve had since I was ten, three rocks, assorted batteries, and literature for a computer we used to have.   

Why these items reside in the right drawer is beyond me: blueprints for a garden shed, pain pills for a dog that is now dead, the leg of a broken plastic horse that is on the kitchen shelf, a sample bottle of Ortho Weed-B-Gon, dental floss, a baby spoon, fifteen pen lids, and a thermometer.   

I can bet anything when I need to take someone’s temperature, or we finally are ready to build that garden shed, both will vanish mysteriously. 

I’m not exactly Sherlock Holmes, but logic tells me I might just find them both in the bathtub months later. 

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