Many years ago, I sent Marianne a package. It was one of those meticulously assembled care packages we used to send each other when we had no childrens and much more time on our hands, filled with cheap jewelry and trinkets, handmade art, and random objects designed to provoke laughter. In one of those inspired gestures to which I am prone, I threw in an empty Prozac sample box containing a single large rubber bug. I chuckled to myself about this for, oh, probably a week, and then forgot all about it.
A few weeks later, Marianne informed me Couch Teen, then in preschool, had taken the box to school with him to share with his peers in Show and Tell. I found this more than a bit alarming, having meant it strictly as a nudge of slightly twisted humor for the eyes of slightly twisted humans. I was not there for the presentation, but apparently what happened next was that Little Couch Teen first displayed the medication box to the curious roomful of four-year-olds, then introduced his classmates to his new friend.
"This is Prozac," he declared, brandishing the rubber insect and forever traumatizing and confusing his classmates.
To this day, I laugh.
This has probably been my last appearance in this space for the foreseeable future, and it has been fun. I do thank you for you patience with my seeming inability to twiddle the right knobs at the right time here, but that's what blogging nerves will do to a person. In the end it's all about the sharing.
Assuming Marianne has not fallen off the poop deck, she should be back with us tomorrow. And: Ha ha, I said poop deck. Sunburned and inflicted with tinnitus Marianne may be, but with a million tales of her exploits on the Bruise Cruise and more travel madness to come. I, for one, can't wait.
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman