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FIRST BIRTHDAY, PART II 2/22/2011 5:33:30 AM
MY FIRST BIRTHDAY by Alexandra E. Faucette (nee Mills)
as told to her father Robert A. Mills
PART TWO (of 3)
(As a refresher, you may access PART ONE from the archives at the bottom of this page)
“Here’s what we’re gonna do, kiddo: all the stuffed animals an’ dolls, even the ones up on the shelves, are invited.”
“What about Chloe-the-dog?” I wanted to know.
Henry shook his head. “No way.”
“Why not?”
“Well, listen up, in the first place, Chloe’s NOT a stuffed animal. She’s just a live, stupid ol’ mutt. Her fur is real, an’ it falls out about sixty times a year — you want our crib to look like the comforter on your parents’ bed?”
I said, “I think you should at least invite her
.
“Look,” Henry sighed, “if we invite her, she’s so dumb she’ll prob’ly come — an’ nobody wants her. Besides, in dog years she’s almost eighty, for cryin’ out loud! She’d never make it over the side of the crib! An’ even if she did, she’d eat everything up before any of us had a chance. An’ she’d spend the whole night yappin’ at the other guys an’ lickin’ their faces. No way — Chloe’s out.”
Pouting, I looked hopefully to Eleanor Roosevelt, my cloth and yarn doll, and Mopsy Toetwinkle, a smaller stuffed bunny, a distant cousin to Henry. “What do you think, Eleanor? Mopsy?”
Mopsy’s head popped up. “’Bout what?”
“About inviting Chloe to my birthday party.”
“Who’s Chloe?” (Sometimes, talking to Mopsy was like talking into a toy telephone.)
Eleanor Roosevelt sighed. “Chloe, my darling Mopsy, is that insidious live animal who barks day and night at every object, inanimate or otherwise, within a quarter mile of this house. Why they don’t just strangle the beast is beyond me. Every time I try to take a nap she starts her interminable yapping!”
I turned to Paddy Brewster, my Paddington Bear. “What do you think, Paddy?”
He looked up with his one good eye from beneath the brim of his yellow hat and said, “Sure.”
“Sure? What does that mean — sure?”
“It means, put it to a vote.”
Notary, my stuffed white seal, shouted from across the room. “Yeah! Put it to a vote! I’ll witness it!”
Tweety Bird chirped something that sounded like “Hear! Hear!”
Pagliacchio, the Pachyderm, bellowed through his trunk: “Vote! Vote! Vote Republican!”
Pekoe, my little orangutan, cried out, “I wouldn’t monkey around with this!”
Momma Bear and Baby Bear looked down from their place on the cabinet shelf and said it sounded just right to them.
A.G. Bear (no relation to Momma or Baby Bear) spoke Stuffinese as well as any of us, but he also had an electronic voice box, which permitted him to communication in Bear Talk (something which amused my daddy no end, but which I felt A.G. Bear never really needed).
Simultaneously, in Stuffinese and Bear Talk, he said, “Let’s – aghghgh — make — rumptft — it—gwogrottymphp — a secret — oowowphtfmt — ballot!”
Eleanor Roosevelt bowed her head. “What a ghastly sound!”
The rest of my stuffed animals — Ernest Angel, my flying guardian bear, Snoopy, Felix (a plastic rabbit who played a sorry rendition of Brahm’s Lullaby), Big Bird, Leslie Caron (another toy rabbit who rocked back and forth while playing Hi Lilly Hi Lo), Flo, my polar bear, the Pink Pansy, and Louie the Lobster — all of them were talking at once.
Henry banged one of his four good luck charms on the side of the crib.
“All right, all right, you guys, knock it off! Clam up a minute an’ lemme think.” He placed one floppy ear over one eye and contemplated the situation.
“Okay,” he said, finally, “okay. We’ll take a vote, but the secret ballot is out. . . . Quiet! We don’t need a secret ballot. The stupid mutt’s in bed with the ol’ man an’ the ol’ lady, an’ besides, she don’t understand one word of Stuffinese. So just raise your paws an’ vote. All those in favor of invitin’ Chloe to the party, raise ‘em up!”
One by one some hands went up; others remained motionless.
“Okay. One . . . two . . . three . . . ” There were seven votes in favor of Chloe.
“Opposed?”
Up went other hands and paws. “ . . . five . . . six . . . seven. Seven? Hey, wait a minute, we gotta tie!”
Pagliacchio said, “In case of ties, ties will be awarded!”
Henry looked at me. “Did you vote?”
I shook my head.
“Well, come on, kiddo, you gotta vote!”
“No,” I said, “it wouldn’t be fair. After all, it’s a party for me, and it wouldn’t be — proper for me to interfere with the guest list.”
Henry made a face. “What kinda female logic is that? We gotta tie here. Your vote will decide it.”
I pulled Henry aside. “If I vote,” I whispered, “I’m going to vote to invite her.”
Henry turned away and addressed the others. “Okay, folks, we gotta tie an’ a tie breaker ain’t gonna work. The way I see it, Chloe’s not in an’ she also ain’t out. She’s no place. So let’s jus’ forget about her.”
“No, no!” I insisted. “We have to compromise.”
“That’s right,” agreed Eleanor Roosevelt. “Compromise is the backbone of all democratic action.”
Henry was beside himself. “Wait a sec! Whadda I got here, a bunch of Kissingers?”
Mopsy perked up. “Are there going to be kissing games at the party? Ohh—”
Paddy Brewster spoke up. "It's simple. We have a tie vote. The child can’t get involved. It wouldn’t be right. So, here’s the plan: we invite the silly dog to the party, but we don’t let her jump in the crib or get near the food. She’s too old to jump in, anyway, so she’ll get bored and disappear. Big deal.”
I said, “Paddy’s right. And this way, nobody’s feelings are hurt.”
Mopsy asked, “Chloe’s got feelings?”
“We all do, darling girl,” said Eleanor Roosevelt. “Feelings are what the right stuffing are made of.”
“All right, all right,” Henry sighed. “I give up. Chloe’s invited.”
Seven stuffed animals clapped and cheered: “Yea!” Seven others snorted.
It was decided during another meeting on another night that A.G. Bear would have to actually extend the invitation to Chloe.
“Dogs,” Henry informed us, as if we didn’t know, “don’t speak Stuffinese. But A.G. speaks both Stuffinese and Bear Talk. An’ Bear Talk is a lot like Dog Talk, except for adverbs an’ conjunctions.”
“Are you sure Chloe will understand him?” I asked.
Henry shrugged. “I dunno. But it’s worth a try.”
The next morning while I was watching “Sesame Street” from my playpen and my momma was upstairs getting dressed, A.G. nudged Chloe, who was lying on the solar room floor taking the first of her dozen or so daily naps. Chloe growled softly and rolled over.
A.G. said, “Rrrrumphtdget — we’re — gummtrowww — having — wormshgdhget — a birthday party — rrooghkltht—for — arrkkaarmutophiii — the kid. Raggummtakky — you’re invited.”
Chloe growled something in reply and A.G. nodded his head. “Frugglod omomtruphft t— two a.m. Thursday, Feb 20.”
Chloe made what my daddy curiously referred to as a “motorboat” and went back to sleep.
Later that night Henry wanted to know “what did the dumb dog say?”
A.G., who fancied himself something of a cub reporter, looked at his notes. “Said okay, but don’t expect her to bring any presents.”
“Nobody’s bringing any presents,” said Mopsy.
“Certainly not,” agreed Eleanor Roosevelt. “There’s no way any of us can get out for shopping in this weather . . . “
“Besides,” Paddy Brewster inserted, “who’s open at 4 a.m.—besides Seven Eleven?”
“But,” Eleanor went on, “we have to bake a cake, get a candle, some matches, ice cream, some party hats, streamers — ”
“Hold on! Wait a cotton-pickin’ minute, people!” Henry’s ears were twisting into a knot. “What is this, the Mardi Grass? It’s jus’ a kid’s birthday, for Pete’s sake, not a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral!”
“We’ve got to have a cake,” said Sam the Snake, rattling his tail.
“Yeah, well, you’re new here,” said Henry, with uncertainty. “How we supposed to get a cake?”
Mopsy said, “I’ll bake one!”
“Yeah, right. Where?”
“In the microwave.”
Eleanor said, “I’ll help!”.
“That’s a half-baked idea,” muttered Louie the Lobster.
Henry thought about it. Finally, he said, “Okay. But no candles an’ no matches — an’ you guys gotta clean up the kitchen so no one ever knows. Either of you know how to bake a cake?”
“Not really,” Mopsy admitted. “But Alex’s momma’s got six thousand cook books in the pantry closet.”
Henry kicked up his back paws in despair. “Okay, okay, so go bake a cake. It’s in your hands. But I’m warnin’ you, no candles an’ no matches.”
“How about a flashlight?” Paddy suggested.
“You wanna stick a flashlight in the middle of a birthday cake!”
“Why not?”
“I’m gonna bring wine!” cried Pagliacchio the Pachyderm.
“Come on! All we gotta do is spill wine in the crib an’ we’ll all wind up down in the basement!”
Pekoe the Orangutan shrieked, “Not the basement! Anyplace but the basement!”
None of the stuffed animals had ever seen the basement of the big house, but they’d heard tales from visiting toys that had made their fur creep.
Ernest Angel fluttered his wings, murmuring, “Yea, though I walk through the hallway in the shadow of the basement stairs . . . “
