CSotD: Improving the shining hours
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What makes Cul de Sac so special is that Richard Thompson doesn't just remember what happened when you were a kid, but how it felt.
This doesn't always translate into individual strips that make you fall out of your chair. Last week, he did an arc in which Alice insisted on riding the umbroller to the grocery store and it brought back a horde of memories, though more of my little sisters than of myself.
By the time I was of an age to whine to be coddled and carried, I had a little brother who was of an age where he really did need to be coddled and carried and so the jig was pretty much up. By contrast, my sisters were born so close together that they hit that stage at the same time, and without younger siblings, resulting in a family trip to Atlantic City that will forever be remembered as the "Carry me!" vacation.
It was a very funny arc but, like much of his work, it was so finely crafted that no particular strip lept out and proclaimed itself a CSotD. It was more of a single story that unfolded over several days.
Well, I don't know where we're going this week, but today's strip hit me at exactly the right moment to stop me in my tracks.
Within the past few days, we've had some cool, wet weather here in New England that has started the leaves turning and the woods where I walk the dog in the morning are suddenly full of damp smells that bring me back to being Alice and Beni's age.
Perhaps it's because I spent nearly 20 of my adult years out in Colorado, where there isn't much in the way of autumn and where the desert climate reduces the mold and decay to a minimum, but autumns now put me in mind of a time when, like Beni, my life was full of small moments which were large at the time when they occurred.
And, yes, some of them involved pain, but he recites these painful moments more as the highlight of his summer than as traumas, and that's what Richard does — he remembers not just what happened but how it felt. Sure, it hurt. But it was interesting, and that's why Beni is sharing it.
He isn't asking for sympathy because it hasn't occurred to him that he needs any. I'm sure he cried at the time, but we cried all the time at that age, so what difference does that make?
What I particularly remember is the intensity with which I observed the smallest things. This is what autumn brings back:
A little boy hunkered down on the forest floor, picking through things, finding a stick and peeling back the outer bark and finding inner bark and smelling it, feeling its texture, scraping it back to see how thick it was, how well it was stuck to the wood underneath.
Noticing that some leaves were dry and crackly and you could crush them into pieces in your hand, while others were like wet pieces of paper stuck together and some others were almost dirt and soon would be dirt.
And, before I start sounding like one of those tiresome writer's-workshopped personal essays on NPR, here's what Benji's matter-of-fact tale of woe and experience brought back to me:
I was five years old, and Quinny, who was also five, lived two doors down. One day, Quinny said, "I'll bet you I can pick up a bee with my bare hands." I wasn't going to let that dare go unchallenged, and I don't think we actually bet anything, but he bent down in the grass and picked a dandelion that had a bee on it and said, "See?"
Well, I knew he hadn't picked up a bee. He's picked up a dandelion, and I told him it was a cheat and we probably went back and forth on the topic for a few minutes but then we did something else.
Only, the next day, I was in my backyard hunkered down in the grass watching what was happening, and there was a bee on a clover blossom, and I thought of Quinny cheating like that, but I also looked at the bee and it occurred to me that bees are kind of built like crayfish, except they have necks, which doesn't matter, and, instead of claws, they have stingers in their tails, which does matter, except that, when you pick up a crayfish behind the head, he can't get you with his claws but he also can't touch you with the tip of his tail, either.
So I reached out with forefinger and thumb on each side of the bee's abdomen and plucked him off the clover blossom, and I was right! He buzzed and fussed, but he couldn't reach me with his stinger! It worked!
I had picked up a bee with my bare hands and it didn't particularly bother me that I was now holding an extremely furious bee, because that was like catching one in a jar — you simply throw it and run like hell, which I did, and the bee didn't catch me, and now I had a skill that could be turned into Something of Value.
I ran over to Quinny's and he was in his backyard with his dad, who was working in the vegetable garden, and I said to Quinny, "I'll bet you I can pick up a bee with my bare hands!" and he said, "Yeah, you're just gonna pick a flower with a bee on it," and I said, "No."
And there was a bee on a dandelion, so I reached down and grasped it with my thumb and forefinger on each side of its abdomen and the little sonofabitch stung me and I ran home crying.
I don't know if I was crying because it hurt or if I was crying because the other one didn't sting me when we were all alone in my backyard but this one stung me right in front of Quinny and his dad.
Yes I do.
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