One Story of Naming (more to come)

When Mama Peaches  was three, going on four, we got a kitten, a barn-cat kitten. When she plucked the kitten out of the barn litter, Mama Peaches didn’t think twice before she said, ‘Her name is Sparkles.’ When we realized that the kitten was a little tom, Mama Peaches didn’t know what to call him. During the period of namelessness for the kitten, we had the little guy neutered. A friend who’d also gotten a kitten from the same litter took him and his brother to the clinic. The certificate certifying his being neutered and having gotten ‘shots’ identifies the cat as ‘Larry’, a name no one ever called him. ‘Prairie Dog,’ Mama Peaches informed me, was his name when he came home that time. That was my favorite name. The next time I asked about the cat’s name, Mama Peaches told me, ‘His name is Buttcheeks.’ Cute.  At this early point in his life, Buttcheeks decided to explore the world, or the neighborhood at least. He didn’t come home for a couple of days. Mama Peaches and Rainbow talked about kitten search strategies while they walked around the neighborhood, looking for the kitten. ‘We could put up signs around town.’ We live in a very small town. ‘What could we put on the sign, so that people would know if they’d seen our kitty?’ Rainbow asked. Thoughtful, Mama Peaches listed traits: ‘Grey, with some brown. No testicles. Striped.’ That night, right as we were going to bed, Mama Peaches asked if she could call for the kitty, out on the front porch. We stay up later than most people, so we cautioned her: ‘Don’t call too loud, Mama Peaches. Some of the neighbors might already be in bed.’ Mama Peaches pushed open the screen door and stepped out onto the porch. In a stage whisper, she called ‘Buttcheeks. Buuuttcheeeeks.” The kitty didn’t come home right then, but he did come home the next day, before we had to resort to putting up signs. And then Mama Peaches named him Cinnamon, and that name has stuck.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest. . . .

My father had just replaced a fuse in the fuse box under the steering wheel in the 1963 Chevy station wagon and tested the brake lights. My job had been to stand behind the car and confirm that the lights flashed on when my father put his foot on the brake pedal. I put the little box of Buss fuses away in the glovebox. I remember -- I must have been about three years old -- my father showed me how, when you closed the glovebox in the car, the glovebox lid hit a little button that turned off the light. I took this new knowledge with me inside to the kitchen, to the refrigerator. I located the little pokey-out button that was the light switch there. No reason for the light to be on when no one was looking, right?

That night, I stayed up late, after I'd been kissed on the forehead and told to 'sleep tight; don't let the bedbugs bite'. I pretended to be asleep, probably squeezing my eyelids shut -- that would have been a dead giveaway if anyone would have actually taken a look at my scrunched-up face.

When I was three-year-old-confident that my mother, my father, and my sisters were asleep, a good six or eight minutes later, I opened my eyes as fast as I could. I could still see the outlines and shadows of all the stuff that was in my room when I was awake -- the pile of my dirty clothes lying in front of the half-open closet door. Apparently, the world was still there, even when no one was looking. At least in my bedroom. I remember wondering, though, if that little box of Buss fuses was still there in the car's glovebox.

Short family-life story

Rainbow, my wife, was working on an art project; she’d promised to put a piece in a show that started last weekend, and she hadn’t finished it. I had helped her make pumpkin bread that she’d promised Mama Peaches and Saffire Cliff that she would make. Creeping up on bedtime, the bread had cooled off and Rainbow was in the shower. I buttered slices of bread for the kids and they applied their own raspberry jelly, the jelly having been a gift from our neighbor, Betty.

As Mama Peaches and Saffire Cliff were enjoying their pumpkin-bread snack, I asked, ‘So, who and what do you have to thank for what you’re eating,’ figuring they’d thank their mom. I abhor silence, so when no one said anything right off, I piped in: ‘We’d, of course, have to thank Bessie the cow for the milk that made the butter.’ And the Saffire Cliff said, ‘And Betty.’ And Mama Peaches immediately said, ‘And mom, and you.’ ‘And,’ I said, ‘ultimately, to the rain and the ground that the grain grew in, and the farmer that grew the wheat, and the sun.’ Then, not so eloquently as a true zen master, I stressed how everything in the world is dependent on everything else. Saffire Cliff took the opportunity to sum up this fairly-lame definition of zen Buddhism, saying, ‘Yeah. So, it’s like “thanks for everything, and f@#k everything else”.’ For being eight, he’s really quite the analyst.

Our son (one of this blog's main characters) likes to use the screen name Saffire Cliff. We know the "correct" spelling of sapphire, but that spelling is almost always already taken when he tries to register a new screen name. That's the explanation of the "incorrect" spelling. One premise on which experiences will be rendered here: "correctness is context dependent." In the context of this blog, "Saffire" is correct when we use it as a name. When it's spelled "sapphire", here and in other places, it can be assumed that it means a clear hard variety of corundum used as a gemstone that is usually blue but may be any color except red.

I have observed throughout my life that correctness is context dependent. I'm sure there will be more about this as we go on. If you encounter something that appears to be incorrect, don't panic. With luck, the context will unfold to reveal a new perspective on an experience or observation or a conversation or expression.

Okay -- enough with the abstract stuff. On to the stories.

untesting -- one, two, three

This is the project -- to illustrate the experiences of the main characters. I'll tell stories. I'll post pictures. I'll tell stories, and stories, and stories. I like telling stories. I'll try to remember the dialog just as it was delivered. I'll try to render the conversations loyally. Be prepared -- conversations are full of non sequiturs. I won't describe much that doesn't require description. Readers will have the opportunity to use their imaginations as far as that goes, most of the time.