The broken baby brush

The earliest memory that I can set something of an actual date to (but only approximately) occurred when I was apparently only one and two-thirds to one and three-quarters years old. I remember that it seemed like I had done a lot of things, and had many memories. Almost all of them are gone now, though.

This particular memory was of something important to me. I was able to give it an approximate date because it contained a reference that would force it to be within a particular time period.

I have a younger brother, who was born less than a year and a half after me. When the incident occurred, he was a baby who couldn't do much except lay there and wave his arms and legs and grab at stuff.

On this particular day, my mother was cleaning the house, and she moved the crib around as she cleaned so that she could keep an eye on the baby. She had moved the crib to a very small room with lots of openings (we later determined that the only room this could be was a short hallway with bedrooms on either side, a bathroom at one end, and an opening to the dining room at the other end). The baby kept fussing and my mother kept putting things in his crib for him to find. He would eventually come across them and grab them and then be surprised and distracted for a while. He would lose interest fairly quickly, though, and wave his arms and legs again and fling whatever he was holding out of the crib.

My mother was running out of things to give him and she finally gave him his little baby hair brush (we each had a comb and brush set, but in different colors; his was blue and mine was yellow). He found the brush and was distracted for a while, and then flung it out with great force. It hit the floor and the handle broke off.

I worried and worried about it. I wanted it to be fixed. My mother told me that it wasn't the type of material that could really be glued, and that even if it could be glued, it wouldn't be like new, you could still see where it had been broken. She put the pieces together to show me. She said that she would have to go to town and buy him a new one. I didn't want a new one, though, because it wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't really be his brush. My mother said, "He's too young! He doesn't care!"

I already knew that, though. I knew he didn't care right now. He was just a little baby and didn't know what he was doing. I said, "But when he gets older, and does know, he won't have his brush, because he broke it when he was a baby."

It seemed terribly tragic and I didn't know how to fix it.

A record at school

When I was in grade school, one day we were working on some kind of projects or something, something that didn't involve the more usual requirement of constantly being seated at your desk. This was probably somewhere around 1964 to 1966.

The teacher had brought her record player to school, and she played some records during class. The records seemed to be collections of hits by various artists. One of the songs was by some singing group that I didn't know (I'm not sure I actually recognized any of the other artists, either). This group sang about a young man who was going off to war, from the viewpoint of his girlfriend. She offered to dress up as a soldier and go with him, but he kept refusing, until in the end where he finally agreed.

I liked the song so much that I finally went up and asked the teacher who was singing it. She said it was Peter, Paul and Mary.

I believe the name of the song was "The Cruel War." The song was on one of their early albums.

I began collecting their albums, bit by bit. I eventually accumulated all of their albums that I know of, up to the time of their temporary breakup. I have some of their later ones, too, but not all of them.

The cat that wasn't fooled

My sister loves cats. Years and years ago, she had a black cat with white feet and white on its face. My sister used to hide around a corner inside the house and jump out at the cat and grab it when it came walking around the corner. They loved each other, and it was all in good fun.

One time it paid her back and waited and pounced on her when she came around the corner.


One time the cat came into my room, which it didn't normally do. It walked slowly across the floor. I lay on my bed, watching it. When it got to about the middle of the room, I hissed loudly, pretending to be another cat.

The cat jumped up in the air with its back arched, then landed and continued walking slowly forward, with a small smile on its face. It never did turn and look at me.

I guess it knew I was harmless.

Posts about posts

In a message board I visit frequently, new threads crowd out old ones, old in this case meaning oldest last update. In spite of this, threads can persist for a long time, even years, if they are posted to frequently enough so that they stay comfortably away from the bottom of the list.

On this message board, there are some threads that I help to keep going, by posting to them when it seems that a new post might be needed. When I can, I try to post something more than just a "stopping by" or "time for more" type post, because I feel too many of these will make the thread less enjoyable to read and may end up driving people away who would otherwise read it.

And so I try to find something to say, hopefuly something that has some relevance to the thread's subject or at least what has been talked about somewhere in it. Sometimes a post must be made, though, that has very little connection to what has been said before. Sometimes the inspiration does not come that would allow anything else, or perhaps time does not permit too much thought upon the matter, or the subject may be such that what would directly relate to it, at least in posts that I could make, has already been said. Nevertheless, a post of something must be made, and so a post of something is made, because the alternative is to lose the thread.

In some threads relating to writing or poems, I have sometimes posted poems to keep the threads going. Most of these poems refer to posts or posting in some manner, and most of them are short, sometimes very short, though a few are fairly long. I have posted a few of the shorter poems below, and I will post some of the others at a later time. The poems did not originally have titles, but I have given them titles here, in case for some reason they should need to be referred to again. The times shown are in Arizona time (MST), not the time on the message board, which uses Eastern time.


ALL I HAVE
9:52 AM 11/24/2005

I thought that I might make a post,
But this is all I have,
And though it's not as good as most,
It's a temporary salve.

Perhaps another post will come,
From me or someone else,
Until that time I leave this rhyme,
For someone like yourself.



TALKING TO MYSELF
6:08 AM 3/2/2006

A time has passed,
With no one else,
And so I continue talking,
To myself.

And so I leave this thought,
Upon this day,
Lest this thread,
Should go away.



I POST THIS POST
3:11 PM 4/13/2006

I post this post,
Upon this place,
I leave it here,
With all due haste.

And if you'd post,
Instead of me,
Perhaps a better
Post you'd see.



WHAT STILL COULD BE
3:14 AM 5/16/2006

Another post
Put in the air,
And for a time
It lingers there.

A reminder of
What still could be,
For you could make
A post like me.

Dream - Footsteps, mine and others

Earlier in "The girl with the disappearing face" dream that I talked about in June (the dream where an alien that looked like a human woman was left with just eyes and parts of her face hanging in the air after a series of flashes), an interesting thing happened.

In the dream, previous to the part that I talked about in the post, I had gone upstairs and there was a long room with a wooden floor, which had some smaller rooms with carpeted floors connected to it. My footsteps on the wooden stairs were quite noticeable, and also in smaller, wooden-floored rooms.

When I was walking on the floor of the long room, however, the footsteps changed and became much louder and with more of an echo effect. I stepped off into one of the carpeted rooms, and my footsteps became absolutely silent. I could also feel the cushion effect of the carpet under my feet. I stepped back onto the wooden floor and the loud footsteps returned. I put a foot back on the carpet and the foot made no sound.

I nodded approvingly at the special effects.


I have noticed the loud, reverberant footsteps before. I mentioned them earlier in another post, the "Flying with a leprechaun" dream, where in part of the dream a person coming down wooden stairs caused a leprechaun to hurriedly move down the stairs to get out of the person's way.

It seems to me that these sounds, or ones like them, are also associated with near out-of-body states. Of course, other strange sounds can also occur at such times.

Dream - The pale spider-like thing

Sometime in 2004, probably in the fall, I fell asleep sitting at my computer and had a strange dream.

I dreamed that there were several presences around me, generally of small size and mostly either hidden or invisible. One of them was somewhere under the desk near my feet. Others were off to either side of me and at least one was several feet off the ground and a little behind me. They all seemed to be watching me.

The most disturbing one I could actually see, though only in my mind, because it was directly under my chair.

It was a large, pale, spider-like thing. It was flat and round and perhaps 15 inches across. It was upside down and an enormous amount of legs radiated like spokes from its center. The legs were somewhat flattened down and in disarray, like something had pushed down on it. It still seemed to be alive, though, and aware of me. I felt like it was waiting for something, perhaps some event or signal, or maybe something that I might do.

Time passed, and I became more aware of the other entities, while keeping an eye on the spider-like thing under my chair (at least a mental eye; I wasn't physically in a position to see it).

As more time passed, the scariness of the situation receded somewhat, and some amusement crept in. I felt some amusement from the entities, also.

Time continued to pass, and eventually I woke up.