Thumper’s Family Rules

Thumper’s nose tickles with a long brush of fur and the smooth side of a hind foot claw.  He wakes up and looks just long enough to see his son Quip hopping on through the cave door.  Then he hears “Stupid Marci!”

She’s not far behind.  Her white and fluffy feet churn with incredible speed.  Wham!  Marci is knocked over from the side by Quip as he is running back into the cave.  She rolls three times and is soon back on all four, whipping around and chasing him through the tunnel back to the sleeping rooms.  This all takes place in a split-second.  Thumper barely gets to say their names when Roxie his wife hops in from the opposite tunnel entrance.  “Could you please help them straighten this out?”

“I don’t even know what’s going on.”  He tries to squeeze the sleepiness from his eyes with the back of a paw.

Roxie smiles with nose scrunched up and adjusts her cottontail to the seat beside him.  She wants to see Thumper’s reaction to the latest news about what the brother and sister have done.  “Okay.  Marci found a rock shaped like a carrot and painted it orange.”

“And he fell for that?”

“Let me finish” says Roxie with a punctual tone.  “And yes.  He did.  He bit into it and then out of anger threw it up against the wall.  It tore right through one of Marci’s collectables.  So now they are raging mad at each other.”

“When did this happen?” asks Thumper with his eyes rolled.  He isn’t surprised.

“About thirty minutes ago.  Neither one of them can catch each other.

“Yeah they both have wicked speed.  But..”

“But I didn’t wake you.  Because I know how you get about your naps.”

“Okay and now I have to get this stopped before anything else breaks.”

Young adult Thumper thumping his foot from Bambi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

sits for a minute longer and stares at the main room table.  During this, Marci whizzes by with Quips favorite stash of berries.  Her teenage energy sends a wake of air into the table so hard it almost topples over.

“Stop!”

Marci is already out of the cave once again.  Upon Thumper’s booming assertion, Quip attempts to stop but trips and flips end for end into the wall.  He bounces off and falls back into the table.

Roxie helps him back on his big powder-puff feet.  He dusts himself off and twitches his nose.  Marci’s nose and whiskers are seen by the corner of the door.  She’s called in to join them.

“Alright” Thumper says with a calm voice.  “Marci.  You are going to look straight at Quip and say ‘Wow Quip.  You really changed the look of my collectible.’

With some reluctance and kicking imaginary dirt with her feet, Marci says to her brother the exact same statement.  She maintains the direct look with slight smile.  This isn’t the first time such an exercise in the Huxtable household.

“Good going Marci” remarks their father.  “Quip.  Tell your sister ‘That was one heck of a paint job you did on the rock Marci.’

Quip has to make an extravagant show of it.  He does a clumsy twirl on one hind leg, stopping with a direct look to her and says “My Marci!  What a heck of a paint job you did on the rock!”

Thumper, Roxie and Marci each let out an exasperated giggle at this display.

Thumper raises his paws in triumph.  “And again we have the rule?”

And all four declare with cheer “Don’t go to bed angry!”

Self-Pity: Rise of Conversations

Self-pity starts with anger.  I write a story in the head about who is getting in the way of my efforts.  I come very close to being like a dog, whose feet are shocked from the floor of the cage.  My will saps with the expectation of getting more shocks, held captive within four walls of my making.   Negative thoughts bulldoze any voice of solution.  My anger takes an even bigger role in decisions and I float passively in the ooze of righteous indignation.

Who dares say that I can let go of the insane repetition of wasteful tasks and putter around in circles?  How dare you tell me what I can and cannot do?  And that face you put on while your mouth spews forth the proposal of a better idea.  Worse!  You say I should just walk away from it all!  Can you see my face?  And did you hear what I just said?  Do you see my teeth flashing while I put down your way of life?  Let’s repeat this again and again!  I can do this all night long while laying in the dark with the covers over my head.  I can come up with a million make-believe scenarios where I’m on the cross, bearing my wounds and saying “Just finish me”.

But screw it.  I’ll sit at the table with my laptop and type every single word.  A conversation in my head can be a story on the screen too.

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• Sweet Poison of Self-Pity (pamboyd.wordpress.com)

Brief excerpt from The Jungle Pack

If one could bother to imagine being dropped off in some kind of unknown territory, never experienced before.  And creatures are lurking around all over the place.  You jump.  You run.  You dodge.  Or you throw something at them.  How many of these things are there to look out for?  This was not in the brochure!  And yet this is how most of us treat anger, sadness, confusion and many of the other emotions.