Bernard

There are certain things people just can't live without. I'm not talking about the bare necessities like food and water. I mean those little tresures that every individual cradles. It doesn't have a rhyme or reson, but it represents child-like neediness like my little brother Rodney and his blanket with lamb chop on it which he calls his Gaya.

I have my own Gaya as well-a white, stuffed elephant named Bernard. I found him at Goodwill when I was six. It was at that time I was shorter than the counters in my kitchen, and I was constantly up on my tippy toes.

I remember standing in line at Goodwill with my mama, and for no reason at all, I raised my heals off the tile and reached for something, having absolutely no idea what it was I was reaching for. It was like an out-of-body experience, like I had this sixth sense that something was up there that needed me and I needed it. My hand glided over what felt like a box of crayons, a tuppaware container, and finally my fingers hit against something soft like the clouds I used to make out of cotton balls that are still taped on the walls of my bed room. I grabbed onto the tail of this cotton ball critture and pulled him off the shelf.

He was perfect. He was dressed like a Parisian artist with a burre and a paint pallet. His trunk had four wrinkles which matched the wrinkles fastened to the side of his mouth. His eyes were painted on and were warm and joculer. He looked like he was eternally laughing. And I started laughing too, a deep belly laugh that gurgled through my blood and poured out of me like glad tears.

Everyone in line around me thought I was a spastic, but eventually they began to laugh too. I began to sing out,

"Everybody's got a laughing place, a laughing place to go ho-ho! Take your frown and turn it upside down, and you'll find your's I know-oh-oh!"

I played a game of ring-around-the rosy with Bernard, singing this tune with convivial glee. And after I had curtsied to my laughing audience, I set Bernard smack on top of the check out counter with such deliberation that my mama

 didn't even bother to protest with one of her anti-clutter lectures.

Bernard and I used to have these starring contests. I always lost because his witty, coniving smile made me giggle. Bernard taught me to paint. We loved to draw together, and he always gave the best advise on how to shade. I love to scratch him behind his giant ears, a habit that stained his ears with paint when I was finger painting and forgot there was liquid color on my fingers.

When I met Bernard, I met the artist of my soul.

Marjie

Marjorie Amelia...

I take my pointer finger and begin writing my name in the ceiling. To the naked eye, the letters appear invisible, but as I formed each symbol with my bare finger, continuously adjusting to avoid the spokes of my ceiling, I saw my name appear in a bold, comic sans font with red hue like that of a circus tent.

I wondered if my name would ever be seen anywhere other than on the roof of my bedroom ceiling or stamped on the top of school assignments.

I go by Marjie. I love my name because of the soft "g" sound at the end. When I say it, it sounds like golashes crunching in the snow.

Genius

Here I lay again, sprawled out sideways on my twin bed, with my feet to the floor and my face to the ceiling...my official day dreaming stance.

Philosophers of old have always been seen posing in prosaic, smart-looking statures, with their faces tilted towards heaven and their hands supporting their precious heads, their bony index finger massaging the bristles on their chin. The ordinary human being looks at these revolutionary figures and exclaims,

"Ah! Such poise...such geniusness!"

And here I lay, in one of the most ungenius, unladylike, pathetic looking positions yet to be seen, and if someone were to paint a portrait of me and hang it in an art museum besides Aristotle and Socrates, the common passer by would be disgusted with the entire human race completely.

But just wait until you hear the next part!

I think I might be a genius.

Ah! Now I've done it! You're probably laughing hysterically. Infact, you've probably laughed so hard and with such intense gusto that you are now lying on the floor dead, having drowned in your own unquenchable laughter like when you're being tickled and the tickle convict refuses to stop, sucking all the oxygen housed in the crevices of your lungs.

But if you're still alive, hear me out.

I know titling myself as a genius is an awfully bold and even more, conceited, thing to do. I'll admit when I said it, I felt the index finger of pride and the middle finger of vanity crawl up my back like a two legged spider.

But like Peter Pan always exclaimed.

"Conceited?! Not me. It's just that I am what I am, and I'm me!"

Conceited you say? Perhaps, but I cannot tell a lie.