I am, by almost all accounts, an “indoorsy” type person. Gabe, on the other hand, is every bit as outdoorsy as his mother. I won’t say that I’m disappointed by this because I know that kids should want to play outside. According to all the nature propaganda that Libby shares with me from her parenting magazines and websites, playing outside for at least an hour a day dramatically decreases the chances that a child will develop ADD and ADHD problems.
But I worry about this. Everyone is ADD or ADHD these days. They’ve got more drugs to “deal” with this problem than they do for erectile dysfunction and restless leg syndrome combined (though I base this observation only on the number of commercials that I see, because that’s really the only reliable way to know what drugs do, I’m sure, otherwise it would be an incredibly irresponsible practice for the FCC, or whoever regulates such things, to allow drug commercials to air in such a dangerously frequent and vaguely informational fashion). And I’d hate to make Gabe a pariah in his school just to appease his early childhood desire to play somewhere other than the five rooms we have designated as safe zones for him right now.
Can you imagine how terrible it would be for him, as the only child in a room full of attention deficient schoolmates, to get through his days? Every recess he would have to listen to the constant ribbing of his peers to the tune of, “Hey, Gabe! Why don’t you sit still long enough to read an entire comic book for us! Freak!” Or maybe they’d make up a jump rope rhyme: “Gaberella, dressed in yella, went to the library to read Nelson Mandella. Made a mistake and read an Ake (Ake Anderson, a Swedish detective fiction writer—yeah, not many authors out there with names ending in –ake sounds, it would seem, but I’m certain his second grade friends would have the research skills to search on Wikipedia for “ake author” like I did and use the first name that appeared in the teasing rhyme that they'd create). How many librarians would it take?”
The horrors. And, more importantly, how will Gabe ever be able to thrive in this age of useless trivia if he doesn’t have a sound foundation of exposure to the shows that will become pop culture references in his later years? How will he ever be able to relate to “I love the 00s” when it airs here in about three years? These things trouble me.
And today is going to be another nice day, which means more time outside. Nonetheless, I’m determined to get something posted this morning before and during his nap, because I care that much about, um, things, I guess. Whatever. I forgot what I was going to say. My attention and focus is terrible these days. Hey! Did I ever tell you about that episode of the Muppets with Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in it? Or when Kenny Rogers sang “The Gambler” on a train surrounded by really creepy old person muppets? It was awesome.
Akiko and “The Eye”
We left our hero, her nemesis, and some other secondary characters that were searching for her in Gabe’s Room Park, preparing for a face off.
Unfortunately, the events that were supposed to quickly follow had to be postponed while the Army Corps of Engineers removed the playground equipment from the park. They were deemed “unnecessary for a bedroom now that the weather has gotten nice” and the entire set was disassembled and moved out to the driveway. There are plans underway to replace the playground equipment with, perhaps, a nice set of plastic table and chairs suitable for drawing on, but, as with all government projects, the actual work hasn’t gotten underway just yet.
After the brief disruption and quite a lot of foot shuffling and uncomfortable glances from one character to the other (because nobody would engage in polite conversation with “The Eye” because she’s just too creepy) while their setting was being rearranged, the players picked up the thread of their story where it left off.
Maria faced off with Akiko, who is flanked by a number of young thugs as back up (though they surely would rather be called "toughs" instead. At least I'd prefer that. Imagine living your life through young adulthood and all the pieces that made up that life, only to be called, probably to your face, a "thug." That's hardly something to be proud of. "Tough," on the other hand, at least doesn't sound so much like you're a not-quite menacing extra hired to stand around behind the Joker or some other cartoon super-villain. Not something a mother could be proud of, but maybe something that she wouldn't be afraid to tell her bridge club about four martinis into the evening). Stanley, Dag, and Karl Weathers were meeting nearby to discuss the possibility of Dag’s acceptance of Stanley’s case to find his niece. And . . . action.
A MAJOR battle ensues. Akiko kicks some serious mafia butt. Chaos rules the day. I probably should go into detail, but fight scenes, while almost certainly the most interesting narrative element of a story (after sex scenes, of course), the kind that even the least interested of reader will pore over with close attention, just don’t interest me all that much when stuffed animals are concerned. And, really, when we get to these scenes in our stories, all it means is that I try to convince Gabe to pick up his toys and throw them around a little (which is what I hope will happen in today’s video offering).
But Stanley, Dag, and Karl didn’t participate. They just backed slowly into the shadows when the trouble started because, sadly, Stanley didn’t know that it was Akiko involved in the melee. His aunt, in her flighty short-sightedness, hadn’t even supplied him with a picture of her niece, so Stanley didn’t have any idea what she looked like. On the plus side, Dag agreed to help Stanley with his case, so they’ll probably get involved eventually.
And that, my friends, is as far on Akiko’s story as I got originally. Thus ends the storylines that I created with Gabe before I started this blog. Now it’s new stuff from here on out.
Oh, bollocks! Here’s a bit of clarification. I just realized that the last batch of pictures—the ones of Akiko and the gang in the “park” surrounding the little plastic slide in Gabe’s room—were deleted and nobody ever saw them. Thus my earlier reference to the park equipment being removed probably made no real sense. Duh. Yeah, so we disassembled his slide yesterday and moved it out the driveway since it’s nice enough for him to play on it out there now. Originally, I had everyone set up around the slide as they were all meeting in the park. But that piece of setting was gone for today’s video. Yeah, good times when you have to spend an extra paragraph explaining something that didn’t need to be explained in the first place. Could I have just deleted the earlier reference and never written this paragraph? Sure, but that was a pretty fair percentage of today’s storyline post! Without that and this explanation, this would have been about three sentences long or something. You’re welcome!
So, this one is a little long again, and not really on topic. Gabe started off interacting with the dolls he was supposed to (the one he's carrying at the beginning is Maria "The Eye," who hasn't had a picture on here because she was lost--stuffed in the bottom of a basket, actually--for a few months, but you can't see her creepy eye in the movie, I'm afraid), but he lost his mark very quickly. I kept filming, though, because I saw some promise in his interactions with his toy kitchenette. I was hoping he'd show everyone a little unnecessary destruction. He tried, but not to the level that I'd hoped he would.
Oh, and sorry, no pictures this time. I couldn't think of any way that I could stage the players that would be relevant or interesting, so it's just the video this time.
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