Besides Akiko Gogli: Underworld Tails, Chapter Tarnations

Tuesday it became official! After nearly two years of wading through the endless red tape of foster care (which I understand the need for, of course, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it), we finalized the adoption of our son Gabriel.

It went down like this. We got to the courthouse at 8:00 (our scheduled time was supposed to be 8:30, but they told us to be there early because they’d be able to work us in as soon as everything was in order) and found a spot to sit. We had an incredible crowd of family, friends, and supporters there, perhaps 20 extra people in all—I could tell you for certain, but then I’d have to close my eyes and count everyone out on my fingers and toes, and that would be very embarrassing for everyone, so let’s just ballpark. My brother Ben even made a surprise appearance. He flew in from Kentucky on Saturday, right into the middle of our “blizzard.” So it was really a very special day and we only wished that everyone could have been a part of it.

Anyway, we sat in the waiting area and watched the people pass by, which is never a dull time in the courthouse. It was like it was Free Teeth day at the county fair. Yeah, you figure it out. Our lawyer showed up about 8:10 and said he would get us logged in or whatever it was he had to do. Fifteen minutes later, he came back with our assigned court room and we were ushered in.

After two years of hoop jumping, I was subconsciously prepared for an ordeal. They told us it would be easy, an “in and out” affair, and that we would have top priority, but I had my doubts. Not surprisingly, the judges, who have to listen to some really terrible stuff all day every day, look forward to finalizing adoptions. Our judge said it was about the only bright spot they have some days (they also took our picture when it was all over so they could post it on a big board in the back, the board that everyone could walk by to remind themselves of why they do what they do). As such, the court system is set up to facilitate adoptions. In other words, we would have been pushed to the front of the waiting line no matter when we would have shown up. Everyone else would have just had to wait even longer. And, good to their word, they pushed us in there just about as soon as they could have.

And the formal part of it, the paperwork, was over before it even began. We didn’t even have to sign anything that day (we had done our signing two months earlier, apparently, and all it needed was the judges signature). We just sat behind the “plaintiff’s” table, which was a bit unnerving for someone who’s never even been in a courtroom, much less there as a participant, with the judge on the other side, and he signed our paperwork. They explained to us the procedure for getting a birth certificate and social security number and we were done. So, despite my dubiousness, everything really was easy and fast. And that was it, it’s official!

After that we went out for breakfast and then went to Exploration Place, a sciencey museum in town that’s geared towards kids, and watched our children run around and make messes for the next three hours. Gabe and everyone else had a great time.

And that’s pretty much been my week so far.

The Time Traveling Prospector

Because he becomes a relevant character in the next segment of Akiko’s story, I figured it would be a good time to map out the travels of Stanley “Tarnations” Jenkins.

Stanley was born in Back East, Massachusetts, in 18?? a.d. As a young man, he’d tried his hand at Industrialized Revolutioning, but found that mechanisms and do-jobbies just weren’t his thing, so he tried his hand at professional caber tossing. Unfortunately, there were no Scottish festivals to make the rounds at during this period, and he couldn’t find anyone willing to pay him to throw a telephone pole (known then as “poles”) between five and twenty feet, so he decided to head west to make his fortune.

Because I liked the HBO series, I decided that he ended up in Deadwood, South Dakota.

Originally, this was supposed to be "'Tarnations' and a friend bellying up to the bar for a drink." But I had no small glasses for them to pretend drink from and I couldn't get Stanley to sit up, so this became "'Tarnations' enjoying a Brokeback moment." Fortunately, Gabe's never seen that movie, so he still thinks cowboys are butch.

Interestingly enough, his appearance in Deadwood marked the first bit of time traveling he would perform, though he never even realized it happened, and I’m not giving any explanation for it whatsoever. He arrived in the town following Calamity Jane (who affectionately referred to him as “that chest hair covered cock-sucker”) as a horse wrangler for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Then, inexplicably, he was there during Deadwood’s HBO period (which happened about 10 years earlier). It was, of course, needlessly confusing. He was there when Wild Bill was shot, when Swearengen had his kidney stones, when that dopey looking kid got run over by the horse, and when Dan Dority knocked the eyeball out of that one fat guy’s head.

Here I really wish I had Photoshop and knew how to use it. I wanted to show Stanley in the background of all those events in stills from the show, but I don’t have Photoshop, and even if I did, the end result would have been stills from the show with a very badly pasted in teddy bear in the middle of everything. Oh well. Just use your imaginations.

One day, Stanley was working his claim.

Stanley panning for gold near a waterfall. If you close your eyes, it's almost believable.

Because I only have a vague notion of how gold was mined or sieved or farmed or whatever, I’m going to say that he was doing it with a battleaxe and a cat-of-nine tails. Why am I saying that? Dunno. The mental image of a teddy bear that looks like he’s covered in chest hair standing near a formidable rock protrusion, hacking/smacking at it with a battleaxe and/or cat-of-nine tails is really amusing to my brain. But he didn’t get many swings in before a strange blue box from the BBC series Doctor Who appeared.

Startled by Tom Baker’s scarf and curly “devil” hair, Stanley leapt at the box—his thought processes being that if he jumped directly at it and shouted really loud, he would frighten the box and its scarffed (I actually think I prefer “scarffelloed” as the participle of that word, but it seems a little too needlessly flashy) occupant away.

Stanley attacking the, ahem, TARDIS. Sorry, no doll sized battleaxes or cat-of-nine tails that I could find, and a blanket covered box was as close to a police call box as I could get.

But it didn’t work. Instead, he was sucked into the time/space vortex thingumy with the T.A.R.D.I.S. (which, I didn’t know, stands for Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space—though, since you’re not supposed to acronym articles, conjunctions, and prepositions, it really should have been called a TRDS) and brought forward into the future, to a time hitherto vaguely described in Akiko’s story in such a way that it could be anywhere from the 1960s to the present day. And also in Japan. Because I need him to meet Akiko’s Aunt.

Which he did, shortly after Akiko left Japan in search of her revenge on her father. Akiko’s Aunt found Stanley wandering around Tokyo, and all he could say in response to the crazy, weird and wonderful things he was seeing was, obviously, “Tarnations!”

Stanley being confounded by one of Japan's oddities. OK, so a baby crawling out of a stove is not something one's likely to find on the streets of Japan. But what else could I do with Creepy Baby to simulate something strange while confined to Gabe's bedroom? Not much. Imagine she's playing Dance Dance Revolution on a sidewalk, if you like. Or pretend she's a dancing Stormtrooper.

Because she was an old softy, and a hopeless spinster to boot, Akiko’s Aunt fell in love with Stanley, and Stanley returned the feelings after Akiko’s Aunt spent the first year they were together teaching Stanley many important lessons. Imagine one of those teachy/feely movies where the student and the teacher, between the tough lessons of life and whatever they’re studying, learn to love. I don’t know what movie that would be. I’ve never seen one that comes to mind, but there probably is one. That is what happened. Just like that, but probably without Cary Grant or Meg Ryan or whoever was popular in that decade.

Then, because she’d heard word of Akiko’s involvement with the Italian Mafia in the United States, she convinced her recent wedding partner to find her niece Akiko, which Stanley agreed to do, not because it made any sort of sense (because not much of anything about Stanley’s story makes sense—which, I should note, is why I didn’t really tell this part to Gabe, I just summed it up by saying, “This 19th century prospector, who time traveled to the 20th century and married Akiko’s Aunt, tracked her to the United States to try and save her from the Mafia.” Obviously, I had to embellish a little here in the retelling, though, I fear I probably shouldn’t have), but because that was what the bedroom storyboard dictated must happen.

A love scene between Stanley and Akiko's Aunt (played by an Ugly Doll who hasn't been given a name yet). Or it was supposed to be. One day, these videos will be more than me trying to coax Gabe into doing something he's clearly not interested in doing. But don't expect that day any time soon.