The Stanley Incident

This is Stanley Yelnats V:

He’s a Build-A-Bear pig whom I made in Downtown Disney.  He’s named after Stanley Yelnats IV from the book Holes, by Louis Sachar.

I got him the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school.  At that time my older sister Button had just graduated from high school and was getting ready to go off to college, my little sister Booger was about to start junior high, and I had just been moved up to the varsity basketball team.  My mom decided that she would reward us all for being so awesome by getting us each a Build-A-Bear.

Button got a classic teddy bear named Taphy (short for Epitaph because she’s weird), Booger got a rabbit named Basil Stag Hare (named for the hare from Brian Jacque’s Redwall).  And I got Stanley the pig.

It worked out pretty well because in just a couple of years I was going to be going off to college, and like any other newly-pretending-to-be-an-adult college student, I needed a stuffed animal to take with me.

When I was a little kid I had tons and tons of stuffed animals, but I never had any one that was My Stuffed Animal whom I took everywhere with me and needed for comfort.  Instead I had a blanket.  It was called my Rabbit Blanket (or my Rabby Blanky) and it looked like this:

Nowadays it’s more like this:

It looks like it’s been through a blender because it’s a ridiculously old baby blanket.  It’s actually older than I am.  It’s 25 years old, just like my sister Button.  It’s her age because it was originally her blanket.

When she was two years old and I was born, my parents asked her if she would like to be a good big sister and give the new baby her baby blanket, and she said, “Why, certainly, Mother and Father.  I would be honored to part with this symbol of infancy for the good of my recently acquired sibling.  I shall henceforth go blanketless into the great world!”

(So I might be exaggerating a little bit, but I’m sure I’m not THAT far off.  Button has always been super eloquent, and one time she startled her doctor by using the word “actually” at an inappropriately young age.)

Anyway, toddler Button gave her blanket to me.

Four years later, Booger was born and my parents asked me if I would like to be a good big sister and continue the tradition by giving the new baby my baby blanket.

I said, “No.”

And so it’s stayed mine for 23 years.

And I don’t regret my selfishness one bit.

I love that blanket.

A blanket is the perfect kid’s security item because you can hug it like any other stuffed animal, but you can also wrap it around you if you’re cold.  Or you can spread it out on the carpet for a pretend picnic, or you can use it as part of a furniture fort.  Try doing all of that with a teddy bear.  I’ll give you a hint:  YOU CAN’T.

It’s always been one of my most prized possessions.  For some reason I used to be terrified that my dad was going to burn our house down whenever he lit a fire in our fireplace during the winter.  I was SURE we were all going to die, and so I would always gather up all my most important belongings that I couldn’t live without and stand on the stairs, ready to run at the first stray spark.  My most important belongings always started with my rabbit blanket, and usually also included whatever allowance I had and an extra set of underpants.

I loved and I love my rabbit blanket, but there was no way I was taking it to college with me.  It was just a little too blatantly a baby blanket for a dorm room.  So I left it behind.

Stanley, however, was the perfect replacement.  A pig in corduroys was exactly the right amount of ridiculous to come with me.  And so Stanley Yelnats V went to college.

Maybe halfway through my first year, my roommate Alias got her own stuffed animal.

He’s either a chick or a ducky—I’ve never quite been sure which—and he’s made of that stretchy spandex-y fabric and filled with little Styrofoam beads.  He wears a bow tie and his name is Mr. Fabulous. 

Shortly after Mr. Fabulous was introduced to our dorm room, Alias was experimenting with him and his weird flexible body.  She put him in Stanley’s clothes.

She flattened him into a fabulous puddle.

She threw him against the wall. 

He bounced harmlessly back onto her bed. 

It was funny, so she did it again.

It was still funny, so I picked up Stanley and threw HIM against the wall.  He hit with a dull THUD and slid sadly down the wall and onto the floor, where he lay face-down in a dead heap.

Alias and I were both horrified by my heartlessness.

We swore never to talk about The Stanley Incident ever again, which of course meant that Alias told everyone she knew and ever met.

And…now I’m telling you, for some reason.

Anyway.  Now you know my deepest darkest secret about the deepest darkest day of my life—the day I hurled my beloved Stanley Yelnats V against a dorm room wall and let him fall in a heap to the floor.

MovingMovingMoving

I have once again moved apartments.

And this move has been a stressful stressful time of uncertainty, let me tell you:

The end of our old lease was fast approaching, but my roommate and I put off finding a replacement home for a number of reasons.  Well, no, that’s a lie.  There was only one reason: overwhelming laziness. 

So we hurtled towards homelessness, and finally started frantically grasping for somewhere--anywhere--to live.

Luckily, after lots of stress and frustration and driving back and forth between cities, we snagged us a pretty cool little place that isn’t exactly ideal in its location (it adds about fifteen minutes to my commute to work), but has what Calvin’s dad would call “character.”

It’s even got a real live mailbox, little red flag and all.

Another problem, though, was that months ago I had planned a trip home to LA for my birthday, which ended up being the exact same week that my old lease ended and my new one began. 

Clearly my mom was only thinking of herself when she decided to go into labor right when 23 years later I was going to need to move apartments.  Honestly, the lady’s never thinking ahead.

Anyway, because of the convergence of my move-out, my move-in, and my trip to LA, I ended up packing my entire apartment into my car (which is not a particularly big car) and driving it to and from work like a game of Tetris on wheels for a good couple of days as I went through the process of vacating and cleaning the premises of my old place.

I’m actually a little bit proud because everything I own fit into my car pretty easily--with the exception of my bed, my mattress, and the falling-apartest dresser you ever will meet, which all went with my roommate to her boyfriend’s garage because there was simply no other way.  But everything else was transferred from my apartment to my car with hardly any trouble, and I was even able to squeeze in my roommate’s chair and lamp, which she couldn’t fit into her own car.

Either I’m learning to keep my clutter to a minimum or I’m unknowingly driving a clown car.

But packing my life into my car made me super nervous that someone was going to stroll past my car, see it jam-packed with cardboard boxes and garbage bags and bits of furniture and realize that parked before them was a nicely packaged life, just waiting to be seized. 

I’m honestly surprised that nothing was taken.  It was really very stupid of me to drive around like that for so long.  It was painfully obvious that I was in the process of moving and that there might be considerable treasures awaiting a motivated criminal passerby.

Although that passerby would likely be disappointed.

I don’t really own anything all that valuable, except my computer, but I wasn’t taking any risks with that, so I never left it in the car.

The most valuable thing a person would find in my car would be my car, and I would think that a car thief would be better off selecting a vehicle that wasn’t nearly bursting with trashbags of old clothes and half filled notebooks and melted crayons.  The acquisition of my car honestly wouldn’t be worth the hassle of having to empty all of its contents into a dumpster (where, truth be told, most of my possessions probably belong).

And yes, you read me correctly: “melted crayons.”

 I had a big ol’ box of every color of crayon you could ever dream of, and I didn’t think through the decision of leaving them packed in my car for 3+ days in 90+ degree weather.

Melted, the lot.

I could probably stick a bit of string in the box and make the world’s ugliest candle, with its blobs and swirls of every waxy color of the rainbow and the scraps of crayon paper that are drowning in the mess.  Maybe there’s an untapped market for hideous crayon candles, forged through a lack of common sense and the ridiculously hot heat of Sacramento summers. 

I’ll be a millionaire.

Anyway, I guess if a tragedy had to occur, it’s better that it was the destruction of my beloved art supplies and not the theft of my car and my life packed within.  The lesser of two devastating catastrophes, even if just barely. 

But there was also a gap of a few days between me being scheduled to leave for LA and us actually being able to move into our new place.

So, like the crazy person I am, I just drove everything down to LA with me.

Yes, I could have asked someone to let me store my junk at their house.

Yes, I could have taken up my roommate’s offer to use her boyfriend’s garage for temporary storage.

Yes, I could have taken up my manager’s offer to leave all my worldly possessions at the store (my response to which was, “I’m pretty sure that would be a weird thing to do…”).

But all of that would have involved unpacking my car, packing it back up in a week, and then unpacking it again when I finally got to move in to my new place.

So I took the somewhat stupid and somewhat gas-inefficient route of driving my heavy life home with me.

...where I ended up unpacking most of it anyway so that I could drive to places without trashbags fluttering  their red plastic ties in my face the whole trip.

Whatevs.

I ended up using a lot of stuff from my car during that week at home that I otherwise would have had to go without, so it worked out.

 ***

So I had a lovely week at home, and then I had to drive back up here.

I like driving and all, but seven hours is just too long a drive for me.

I can usually get through five and a half, no problem.  Then I start getting the antsies and I start testing myself to see whether I might secretly have the power of teleportation (which so far I do not).

And then I got lost trying to find my new apartment (which I had only ever been to once before in my life) because Sacramento freeways are super weird and I hate them.

I’m sure I’ll figure them out soon enough and I’ll laugh at my current confusion, but seriously.  They make no sense to me.

Being from LA, I generally don’t have many problems with freeways.  It’s kind of a point of pride, being able to figure them out and deal with the traffic and all that jazz.  But what in the world is this Business Loop, and why does it ruin my life EVERY SINGLE TIME I try to go somewhere in Sacramento?

It’s like a freeway for the freeways.  Regular freeway taking too long?  No problem, we’ve got this extra one to solve your commuting problems!

Unless you’re me, in which case it just causes me to not be able to find my exit ANYWHERE, even when I turned around twice to try again.  Nothing.

Luckily Sacramento has lettered and numbered streets, so I was able to exit on...N Street, I think?...and logic my way home from there.

There was some further confusion when I mistook Q Street for a second O Street and thought that maybe P was in the middle and then the city continued on to A on either side, which would be madness and if that were the case I would have gotten right back on the freeway then and there and driven the 7 hours back to LA, giving up on NorCal for good, signed lease and job or no.

Anyway.

Point is I’m here.  Lots and lots of boxes, no internet (I’m here at my good friend the Library), and a longish drive to and from work.

But I have a place with a real mailbox and a hallway with a pull-chain lamp.

I’m golden.

 ***

Here’s a picture of Icarus:

I like Icarus, even though he’s kind of a big ol’ dummy who couldn’t keep it in his brain that wax and high temperatures don’t mix (says the girl who is still mourning the loss of the crayons she let sit in her car for half a week in the middle of summer.  Maybe I like him because I sense in him a kindred spirit).

Also, apparently in my brain’s version of the story, Daedalus is a soul-crushing villain whose goal in life is to drag his son down to mediocrity.

MORAL SCHMORAL--YOU GO, ICARUS! YOU GRAB THAT SHINY SUN!