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G. I. Joe and the Jesus House

When my son Michael was a young child, he loved to play with little action figures.  He loved Spider-Man, Superman, He-Man, G. I. Joe, Batman, and any other little plastic figure that he could hold in his hands and let his imagination fly.  He had a Batman house where he let them all play.  It never mattered to him that it didn’t make sense to me in my adult world that G. I. Joe would be in the Bat Cave with Batman.  They all participated in his games together, and all he needed to entertain himself for hours on end was an action figure in each hand. This always made it so easy to take him with me to boring things where most children would whine.  Michael was as content as his imagination was active. 

Needless to say, with his keen interest in action figures, he loved to help me put up the Nativity set at Christmas.  It must have seemed like one of the best action figure sets he’d ever seen.  He would watch with reverence as I carefully unwrapped each ceramic figure, one by one:  The Three Wise Men, a shepherd boy holding a sheep, and a small separate sheep to place near him, the kneeling Mother Mary and Joseph, and finally, the baby Jesus and his manger.  I never was able to find a suitable stable for my set of figures until Michael was four years old.  It is a  wonderful, handmade structure with a very  rustic, rough-hewn look, covered with shedding moss that drives me crazy to this day, but perfectly sized to accomodate the figures of my Nativity set.  I was so happy to find it.  And Michael was ecstatic as we placed the figures in and around it.  I think he was as excited about my find as I ever was.  I would often find him standing and leaning against the table on which it sat just mesmerized.  I thought surely if anyone his age could really understand the true meaning of Christmas, it had to be him since he was so devoted to the Nativity figurines. He lovingly called the stable “the Jesus house.”

One day when I was at home cleaning house and the children had gone somewhere with their father, I was dusting the table with the Nativity set.  I was smiling to myself thinking about how much Michael loved that set when I saw something very unusual among the figures.  There in the back of the stable behind the manger was a G. I. Joe figure.  He looked so out of place there with his hard plastic army uniform with weaponry strapped across his broad chest and a look of fierce determination on his chiseled plastic face.  What a strange contrast to the other figures who looked so reverent and serene and holy.  I wondered why Michael might have put that G. I. Joe in the stable until it suddenly dawned on me that Michael used “the Jesus House” the same way he used the Bat Cave.  It was his playset!  No wonder I often saw him there so intently happy.  He was playing! 

I wonder now what imaginary scene he had concocted with such strange companions as G. I. Joe and the Holy Family.  But the difference between me and Michael, especially at that age, was that he wouldn’t have had to have any story that made sense to the adults in the world.  His story would have made perfect sense to him as he played with each and every super hero figure together, G. I. Joe and Jesus alike.

“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.” ~Robert Frost.

“Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened.” ~Jennifer Yane.

“Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.” ~Larry Lorenzoni.

“I’m sixty years of age. That’s 16 Celsius.” ~George Carlin.

“Time and Tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of thirty.” ~Robert Frost.

“There is still no cure for the common birthday.” ~John Glenn.

“Live as long as you may. The first twenty years are the longest half of your life.” ~Robert Southey.

“Looking fifty is great - if you’re sixty.” ~Joan Rivers.

“The best birthdays of all are those that haven’t arrived yet.” ~Robert Orben.

“Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.” ~Charles Schulz.

When I was in high school, I only lived a few blocks from the school, and I had a whole hour for lunch, so I would often come home and eat lunch with my dad.  He would always have something ready for me to eat, such as a sandwich and soup or reheated leftovers from dinner the previous night.  One day I came home to a very peculiar smell.  “What IS that?” I grimaced.  “It’s fine.  Just eat it.  I took all the leftover dabs of food from the refrigerator and combined it all in one pot.  I’m calling it ‘Vietnam Hash’.”  It actually didn’t taste as bad as it smelled, but I didn’t take a second helping.  And after lunch, we both went our separate ways, he, back to work, and me, back to school.  By sixth period, I wasn’t feeling very well at all.  I made it to the end of the school day, and I was able to make the walk back home, but by the time I got the kitchen door open, I had to make a mad dash for the bathroom.  I could hear the phone ringing while I was violently occupied, emptying my stomach and my intestines simultaneously.  When I was finally able to limp out of the bathroom to catch the persistent phone, I heard a very weak voice on the line saying, “Are you sick?”  I told Daddy I was very sick.  He just said, “Me, too. That Vietnam Hash is a killer!”  Obviously, there was something in the fridge that had stayed there too long, but as Daddy had quickly dumped all the containers together, no one particular item alarmed him.  For a long time after that nasty episode, it would always make us laugh to say, “Not Vietman Hash!” when asked what we wanted for dinner.

The young man is petting Roy, the iguana; Deb is “way over yonder”!

I just watched a cute little short video clip by country singer Whitney Duncan explaining the meaning of the Southern word “yonder.”  She basically says that “yonder” is wherever you’re not.  And that’s so true!  She goes on to say that actually, when you’re looking at someone who is not where you are, he is “over yonder.”  And you can be “over yonder,” “down yonder,” and “up yonder,” but never “under yonder” because it just doesn’t work.  I like her logic!  Isn’t Southern American a wonderful language?

I have a good idea.  To paraphrase the Zen saying “wherever you go, there you are,” I offer the Southern equivalent:  Wherever y’all go, y’all are over yonder.”

I grew up in a church where we called the spiritual leader of the church the “preacher.”  Sometimes we called him pastor or minister, too, but mainly we called him the “preacher.”  When my sons were about 3 and 6, we got a new minister at our church, which was the habit about every four years.  I wanted the new preacher to meet my children, and I wanted them to meet him, so after his first sermon, I went to the nursery to get them to go meet the preacher.  I had told them at home about wanting them to meet the preacher, and my husband and I had talked a great deal about the new preacher.  All seemed normal until I got to the nursery to pick up the children.  Michael, my younger son, started crying when I told him it was time to go meet the new preacher.  I couldn’t understand why he was crying.  It wasn’t as if he wanted to stay and play in the nursery; he just didn’t want to go with me to meet the preacher.  I could tell he was afraid.  I kept telling him it was going to be okay, that the preacher was a nice man, and he just wanted to shake his hand, maybe pick him up and give him a hug.  Michael cried all the more.  I kept heading back to the church sanctuary with him in spite of his tears and clinging tightly to me.  Finally as we were standing in line to introduce ourselves, Michael wailed at the top of his lungs, “I don’t want to meet the creature.  Please don’t make me touch the creature!”  Bless his heart.  He just misunderstood the title.