Coco!
A little girl is playing on her cell phone, some kind of game or nonsense. The girl with the electronic buddy. She buzzes along on her app, game, thing and does not notice that someone is calling her name.
I'm sitting nearby, back stage. At a play we are both in. In a community theater. I'm waiting for my entrance que. So is she. She plays on with her distraction machine. I look for mischief.
Coco, I say again.
Hmm?
Watcha doing? I bring my head next to hers and look at the phone screen. It dances with color and oblivion.
Playing.
Oh. Playing what?
A game.
OK. I sit up and look around the theater back stage, making sure my costume is alright and my makeup is not smudged, or properly smudged, if that's what it's supposed to be. It's ages in theater time till my entrance. Idle hands are the devil's play things. I can come up with a game of my own, little Miss!
Coco, I say, for a third time. I just can't stand sitting there, doing nothing.
Hmmm?
Whatcha doing? I stick my head between her head and the veil of shadows in her lap. She balks. Quit it!
OK. I jump back, breathing in another waft of back stage time.
You wanna see something, Coco?
What?
Something special.
What special?
It's the most special thing in the Universe!
Coco missed a beat on her game.
Huh?
Almost.
Coco's mom has been eyeing me, suspiciously, as all good moms should, from a couch in the corner next to the fuse box and an ancient ice cream machine that nobody knows why is there. She looks dubious. The next step: Kill.
Coco. What's the most special, important thing in the world? Besides ice cream.
I dunno. Mom?
Moms are good. You've got me there.
K. Coco isn't really into the conversation. I'm not into the silence.
Got a hug for me?
I can feel the female defense pheromones pouring out of Mom. Not My Little Girl!
No. It's the best thing in the world. It's the first thing in the world. It's the only thing in the world. Got a hug for me?
Reluctantly, and under the trigger sharpened laser beam eyes of Mom, Coco gives me a hug.
It's the first thing anybody feels, I tell her. The hug inside of your mother. Right there. Where her hands meet over her tummy. And we hug her back, as best we can. And we want it for the rest of our lives. And we are conflicted when it is not there. Why? Where? Mom?
Coco?
Hmmm?
A hug is at the beginning. At the after. At the now. We are forever hugging our world, our friends, our selves. We celebrate the time when you were me. When you and I were one and the Universe was perfect, placid, and serene. Before we became the I and the Thou. And so we hug.
Coco looks confused. Mom looks non-plussed. I look philosophical, whatever that means.
Give me a hug, little Miss. For that is all that is.
About Me
- Jon
- I work in a State diploma mill in Connecticut, though not as an educational factory worker. I work in the computer center and used to be one of those mainframe guys. These computer-ettes still seem like toys to me (queue Grampa Simpson reference.) My bachelor’s degree is in Biblical studies, which means I worked as a cook after college while going to night school in a community college studying COBOL, Fortran and other variations of the Harappan dialect. After getting a real job I was able to continue my pursuit of worthless yet interesting information by getting a master’s degree in Anthropology. My thesis was a computer simulation of The Prisoners’ Dilemma and, yes, I wrote it on the mainframe. I’m a single parent who raised a daughter (said daughter now works in Boston.) Hobbies include woodworking (full shop in the basement, also inhabited by saw dust angels), community theatre (acting, stage managing, directing, cleaning the toilets, etc.), the Learning/History channels, some gardening, reading and asking ‘What if’ questions like, ‘What if the moon is NOT made out of green cheese?’
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