Love, Jimmie

I really meant to add this to my last post but I got swept up in my feelings about crushes and forgot. I’d love to add the videos that I surreptitiously took of this forthcoming scenario but I feel that not only would I be killed but I’d be tortured beforehand by my very own Pooh and Tigger.

Pooh and Tigger are my nieces for anyone who is new, one a teenager, and one a pre-teen. As evidenced by Crush, they are typical teen and pre-teens who would DIE if they thought any of their friends read this.  They can easily spend 25 of their daily 24 hours on their respective phones and still fuss about having to turn them off at night.  Beauty regimens are becoming important, but mostly for Instagram photos.  Both of them will live stream a spa night if we have one.  Tigger has taught me how to have eyebrows because it seems that I’ve been walking around like a blonde Whoopi Goldberg for too many years.  I love watching them grow up, sure, and I hate to be a cliché about it, but I do take an inordinate delight in watching them still be kids when that rare occasion comes along.

For example, just three short months ago the girls came up for a Nashville visit. After we stuffed ourselves with burrito-type meals at Chipotle and then exhausted ourselves shopping at an outdoor mall, we loaded up and headed to the house.  The girls took about a five-minute rejuvenation rest and then planned the remainder of the evening.  First up was the commercial they wanted to film for a paint drip preventer and after that it was concert/fan time.  I’d like to tell you I knew what they were up to, and you know, those words make sense, but they might as well have been speaking Swahili.  I didn’t know what a paint drip preventer was, nor did I understand what concert/fan time was.  To share with you all, though, I rejuvenated on the sofa while taking copious mental notes and videos because this was probably the best night of my life.

After consuming 8 Starburst, Tigger folded her wrappers into some kind of wonky origami and then shoved a straw through it. Viola!  A paint drip protector was born and it had to be documented!  They took this very seriously.  Pooh readied her camera, Tigger wrote a script, and then they both directed her infomercial debut.  In black and white, Tigger sauntered down the stairs, expertly flipped her hair, and delivered her best spiel in a nasal voice.  It was something along the lines of messy paint drips ruining your carpet and also your life but, and now we switched to color, for $19.99 (plus shipping & handling) you could get not one but two amazing paint drip preventers, organically made by hand from Starburst wrappers! By shoving the paint brush handle through the middle of the wrapper, the awkward and ridiculous painting method people have used for centuries would disappear and the brand new method nearly identical to the first would revolutionize your life!  Tigger then demonstrated her patented technique by waving her straw cum paintbrush across my yellow walls.  Eight takes, Pooh cutting bits here and there, the addition of sweeping music and ta da!  We had an infomercial.

Oh, I wheezed. I wanted to contain it lest I stop the creative flow, but some wheeze slipped out.  Tigger looked over at my prone self on the sofa and said, “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” I swallowed. “I think Seamus sneezed.”

Unfazed, they began anew.

“I’ll go up to the loft first,” Pooh instructed, “and you go hide in the laundry room until I announce that the show will begin.” Tigger trotted off to the laundry room and I’m not sure how it happened or what was even going on, by my stomach got that fizzy excited feeling. I paid rapt attention because this sounded a whole lot like concert/fan time was in the works.

Pooh got a couple of blankets and loped upstairs. One was hung over the railing and the other was donned as a cape, and then the announcements came.  There was a drumbeat on the walls, a thrumming hum, and Pooh hollered the band intro.  Tigger came galloping from the laundry room and while Pooh flailed around upstairs, hanging over the loft railing dancing and singing into a hairbrush, Tigger held up her hands and screamed like she was at a Twenty One Pilots concert. There was much jumping and waving of the cape and while Pooh sang Tigger went wild downstairs.  I’m so glad neither of them had a lighter but I believe that centuries-old method of rock star solidarity went down the tubes with the invention of the cell phone flashlight. Once Pooh finished her set, they switched places and screamed like I would have at a Wham! show.

This went on for hours. I was delighted.

Later, after they had gone home, I picked up the assorted Starburst wrappers from the floor and folded the blankets. I packed the stray socks and moved toothbrushes back into their holders. My house always seems so quiet when they leave.  Sometimes it is a relief and I lie like an X on the bed for hours, but after a while that X turns into a C and I have a little sniffle of joy and pain into the pillow.

Man, I love these children.