Page 560 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
sented itself. Accordingly, I dispensed magic markers to Dave, Daniel, Rachel, and their friends and told them to have at it. In time, and in not a lot of time, Olde Scarsdale, the river, and its environs were embel- lished with new clouds, houses, animals, soldiers, passenger airplanes, airplanes dropping bombs, a girl not completely dressed standing at a curtainless window in a new house, and . . . you get the picture(s). Leg- end has it that it was the state of the dining room’s walls, rather than yours truly, that scared away the irate woman who had penetrated our inner sanctum after Peter had done a bit of a number on her car.
Master of the House
You’ll recall that my childhood relationship with pets was limited to not taking care of two nameless turtles and getting my parakeet, Frisky, whom I became very fond of but really didn’t take care of either, to bother my poor mom with repeated pleas of “Let me out.” My uncle Aaron had a dog named Skippy, but I had very little to do with him, and, as I think about it, I can’t recall a neighbor who had a cat or a dog. My kids had their parakeet named Peri (for Periwinkle), whose funeral you’ll recall I presided at in the side yard at Farragut Road, and Kathy’s kids had Maverick and Gotham, the hamsters, and Francis and Mous- sika, the cats, in Great Neck, none of whom I had any relationship with at 7 Longview. Add to those facts the fact that I tried very hard not to date women with cats when I was single, and you have thereby summed up my relationship with pets before we moved to Church Lane South.
Unfortunately, my relationship with pets did not start well at 16 Church Lane South. On the day that we moved in, we placed the hamster cage in the garage but, sad to say, left the garage door open. The next morning, we discovered that the cage door was open and that one of the hamsters was gone. For whatever reason, the other hamster was freed and, hopefully, escaped the fate that we believe befell Gotham or Maverick, as the case may be. That left us with Francis and her son, whom Kathy or one the boys dutifully fed each day. As I will discuss in
• 542 •