Monday, April 26, 2010
If You're Ever on the Witness Stand....Re-.Remembering the Bunny
If you are ever called as a witness in a trial, think twice about your memory. What you think you remember may not be the truth! Think about that. What you plain old say under oath might not be the truth. That's scary. I wrote the story about my Easter Bunny Experience Gone Bad and truly believed my memory produced an accurate account of the infamous encounter with no revisionist history.. I mean, how much worse could it have been? I am remembering the words "damn Easter Bunny." It happened that way, right? Not according to my son. He says the truth is worse, much worse. He says I said "damn" in my dreams but the real honest to goodness expletive was "I don't care what the f$%king Easter Bunny is doing." Oops! On second thought, I am thinking he is probably right. I am glad I did not have to appear on the witness stand, though, as that Big Bunny who just meant well did not sue me. Actually, come to think of it, I HAVE been on the witness stand and hopefully told the truth, although, to tell you the truth, who knows for sure?! (I was acquitted so whatever I said worked in my favor.) Anyway, I am now super SUPER sorry for my behavior to the Bunny so please remember this, your memory can and does and WILL play tricks on you. I think it usually tries to make the situation better than it was. The bunny probably was a damn bunny but he wasn't quite a f$%king bunny. My apologies.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Morristown Memory
I can't remember why I was thinking of Morristown the other day. I think I had read something about the public library there, which, by the way is infamous for having been the first homeless- man-decides-to-live-in-a-library case in America..
I had a relationship with this1715 northern New Jersey town for over thirty years and remember its pre- Interstate 287 days when it was a picture perfect Colonial town with a charming 1700s town square and really good shopping.
We actually lived in Whippany about five miles north of Morristown on a road that George Washington and his army had marched along on their way to Morristown where he spent the winter of 1779-80. He in a mansion and the troops out in the cold in the woods.
At the age of 10 I rode the DeCamp lines New York bus to its last stop in front of the movie theater on the square in Morristown before it went back into the city. Then I would walk ten minutes or so to St. Margaret School located in the Italian section of town while passing two or three parmesan perfumed Italian groceries. I loved the smell of parmesan in the morning!
But back to Whippany for a moment. Whippany was a small village on a Whippanong Indian site before Bell Labs came to town and precipitated the building of several hundred '50's ranch and split level homes. Years later, thanks to Google, I discovered that the Labs had been working on, among other projects, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) behind its secured gates. How exciting it would have been to have known that at the time!
Anyway, one of Whippany's early residents was The Seeing Eye, housed on a former estate. The Seeing Eye, still in operation but now located in the beautiful hills just outside Morristown, trained dogs for the blind. In fact, they trained guide dogs for about 300 blind persons a year. The dogs used to do their on-the-job-training on the streets of Morristown with their trainers or with trainers and their new proud owners.
The citizenry of the area needed training, too, and we all learned fast. We learned not to stop and pet the dogs, just to let them do their thing alerting the blind to stop or start at crosswalks, etc. It was a beautiful sight that we took for granted as on any one day there were many dogs getting their education, on the Green and in the restaurants and shops of the town.
I think now what a unique experience it was to be part of this training, even in a very passive way and the people of Morristown are still enjoying this opportunity to serve.
I had a relationship with this1715 northern New Jersey town for over thirty years and remember its pre- Interstate 287 days when it was a picture perfect Colonial town with a charming 1700s town square and really good shopping.
We actually lived in Whippany about five miles north of Morristown on a road that George Washington and his army had marched along on their way to Morristown where he spent the winter of 1779-80. He in a mansion and the troops out in the cold in the woods.
At the age of 10 I rode the DeCamp lines New York bus to its last stop in front of the movie theater on the square in Morristown before it went back into the city. Then I would walk ten minutes or so to St. Margaret School located in the Italian section of town while passing two or three parmesan perfumed Italian groceries. I loved the smell of parmesan in the morning!
But back to Whippany for a moment. Whippany was a small village on a Whippanong Indian site before Bell Labs came to town and precipitated the building of several hundred '50's ranch and split level homes. Years later, thanks to Google, I discovered that the Labs had been working on, among other projects, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) behind its secured gates. How exciting it would have been to have known that at the time!
Anyway, one of Whippany's early residents was The Seeing Eye, housed on a former estate. The Seeing Eye, still in operation but now located in the beautiful hills just outside Morristown, trained dogs for the blind. In fact, they trained guide dogs for about 300 blind persons a year. The dogs used to do their on-the-job-training on the streets of Morristown with their trainers or with trainers and their new proud owners.
The citizenry of the area needed training, too, and we all learned fast. We learned not to stop and pet the dogs, just to let them do their thing alerting the blind to stop or start at crosswalks, etc. It was a beautiful sight that we took for granted as on any one day there were many dogs getting their education, on the Green and in the restaurants and shops of the town.
I think now what a unique experience it was to be part of this training, even in a very passive way and the people of Morristown are still enjoying this opportunity to serve.
Big Bunny Blues
He was about seven feet tall from the tip of his ears to the bottom of his fur clad silly feet. You knew, of course, that the someone inside the suit was looking at you from somewhere on the thing's chest but you just naturally looked into his glassy pink eyes and felt a little ridiculous doing so.
We met the big rabbit in the lobby of the Radisson Hotel restaurant. It was Easter Sunday and we naively thought our party of six could march in and have brunch without a reservation. We had spent the day before blissfully perched on a hillside in great weather watching a college baseball game. So the rest of the weekend should be perfect, too. This was an incorrect assumption, to say the least. The hostess at the hotel told us we could not have brunch and I was very upset. Couldn't she just squeeze us in for half an hour? We would hurry. Pleeze! While we dealt with another negative answer to our pleadings, the Easter Bunny started jumping up and down around us. I guess his job was to smooth the waters, make funny, so we would laugh and leave, politely taking our disappointment over the failed brunch in stride.
But I was inordinately annoyed by the cavorting beast. The big darn bunny was in my face, so to speak, and I did not like it one bit. My polite children said "but Mommy, the Easter Bunny is just trying to be nice to you." Really? And then it happened. I looked up into the big darn bunny's eyes and said the fatal and memorable words: "I don't care what the damn Easter Bunny is doing. I just want brunch."
I stormed out of the hotel. Everyone was mortified. But the kids left with a memory they'll never forget. Isn't that what's important? Making special memories? Don't worry. They have not forgotten. . They remind me of this special occasion every chance they get.
We met the big rabbit in the lobby of the Radisson Hotel restaurant. It was Easter Sunday and we naively thought our party of six could march in and have brunch without a reservation. We had spent the day before blissfully perched on a hillside in great weather watching a college baseball game. So the rest of the weekend should be perfect, too. This was an incorrect assumption, to say the least. The hostess at the hotel told us we could not have brunch and I was very upset. Couldn't she just squeeze us in for half an hour? We would hurry. Pleeze! While we dealt with another negative answer to our pleadings, the Easter Bunny started jumping up and down around us. I guess his job was to smooth the waters, make funny, so we would laugh and leave, politely taking our disappointment over the failed brunch in stride.
But I was inordinately annoyed by the cavorting beast. The big darn bunny was in my face, so to speak, and I did not like it one bit. My polite children said "but Mommy, the Easter Bunny is just trying to be nice to you." Really? And then it happened. I looked up into the big darn bunny's eyes and said the fatal and memorable words: "I don't care what the damn Easter Bunny is doing. I just want brunch."
I stormed out of the hotel. Everyone was mortified. But the kids left with a memory they'll never forget. Isn't that what's important? Making special memories? Don't worry. They have not forgotten. . They remind me of this special occasion every chance they get.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Easter
I've cooked up over 30 Easters. In general, the recipe includes gallons of food coloring, dozens of hard-boiled eggs, scores of plastic eggs, many pounds of chocolate and millions of jelly beans. Let's not forget all the Easter baskets and miles of that cellophane grass that lurks around for months afterwards like needles found from old Christmas trees in July.
Several Easters were quite memorable, like the 90 degree April egg hunt one day before Easter and three days before little Alex was born in 1987. Jamie was at the egg hunt, hunting for REAL eggs, no less, which is now, of course, a huge sanitary no-no. He found the golden egg and won the grand prize which was a cute mechanical chicken toy. The man presenting the prize to him dropped the box on the hard street and the chicken never walked or peeped again. The look on poor Jamie's face was one of sheer shock as it was a miracle he had won the prize at all due to the fact that we were overly polite and passive egg hunters compared to the other piranha-like competitive parents who hunted for the eggs with their kids like a sport - passionately pouncing on each egg from yards away, grabbing them as their kid's trophy.
The piranha parents would knock little kids off their tiny sneakers just to claim another egg and would leave their tot rivals crying in the mud on their little tiny bums. The bums!
But, alas, the most memorable occasion (unfortunately) was the infamous Minneapolis Easter bunny incident. I will save this story for the next installment. It is a short story. It is a sad story. It will be worth the wait.
Several Easters were quite memorable, like the 90 degree April egg hunt one day before Easter and three days before little Alex was born in 1987. Jamie was at the egg hunt, hunting for REAL eggs, no less, which is now, of course, a huge sanitary no-no. He found the golden egg and won the grand prize which was a cute mechanical chicken toy. The man presenting the prize to him dropped the box on the hard street and the chicken never walked or peeped again. The look on poor Jamie's face was one of sheer shock as it was a miracle he had won the prize at all due to the fact that we were overly polite and passive egg hunters compared to the other piranha-like competitive parents who hunted for the eggs with their kids like a sport - passionately pouncing on each egg from yards away, grabbing them as their kid's trophy.
The piranha parents would knock little kids off their tiny sneakers just to claim another egg and would leave their tot rivals crying in the mud on their little tiny bums. The bums!
But, alas, the most memorable occasion (unfortunately) was the infamous Minneapolis Easter bunny incident. I will save this story for the next installment. It is a short story. It is a sad story. It will be worth the wait.
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