Dear faithful Uncrated adventurer,
Over the last few years, I’ve enjoyed uncrating adventures with my buddy, Brad, and I hope you have, too! But Brad didn't make me. Hear that? YOU’RE NOT MY DAD, BRAD! However, I gotta hand it to the guy because until I met him, I didn’t know how exactly I came to be, when it happened, or who birthed me into existence. So this story here is all Odis, the way I remember it, starting from my reawakening in an old basement and taking you along on the adventure that led me to discover who I am.
The air was thick with saggy cobwebs. I never took a breath in my life, mind you, but the musty atmosphere in this ancient basement mussed my hair. A slice of sun streaked through the grimy glass of a small window high on the wall. It was across the space a ways, roughly adjacent to a hypotenuse from me; you know how basements are. Suddenly, something I didn't remember ever experiencing happened. Click. A doorknob turned. I heard the groan of dust-caked hinges flexing and a few quick coughs as footsteps creaked the boards above. Showers of dead cells and other micro-trash sprinkled down in shadowy swirls through the beam of yellow poking its way into the basement. A voice cut the thick air like a machete being swung to carve a path through the jungle.
“Woof, David! How did you get Johnny and Stevie to buy this place? It is nast-gust-ing."
Another voice piped up from the main floor:
"Mmkay, Alexis, first step, let’s get a couple candles going. That might help distract us from the fact that nobody has set foot in here since Hasselhoff rocked down the Berlin Wall. Second, our dad and Stevie followed my brilliant intuition because, when it is spruced up, this adorable house will make an amazing flagship for their Rosebud Air BnB rentals, which I have every confidence you will market to its fullest potential.”
Alexis' voice chopped its way down the stairs, approaching me.
“Mhmm, so get those candles going then come down here and help me move out this junk. Nobody wants to pay to see someone else's creepy old stuff laying around,” she said as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
"Had you ever taken just a passing glance at an episode of Storage Wars, you would realize how ridiculous that sounded," David responded from the main floor.
Some banter between these two, I thought, hoping to spend a while longer listening to them.
Surprisingly, the relic of a single overhead light bulb turned on when Alexis pulled the chain, but she should have been less surprised to find her hand covered in spider webs and bug mummies afterward. Alexis let out a disgusted groan. "UGGH! DAVID! So gross. Ew ew ew," she whined, as she pulled the cobwebbing off her fingers.
After this strange visit I couldn't help wondering whose junk Alexis was talking about. I ain’t seen anyone that I remembered. Be it as that may, she didn’t have to look directly at me when she said “creepy old stuff.” In the middle of my preponderances, sound became muffled, and darkness covered over me.
I couldn’t tell how much time passed. Compared to the time in the basement, it was a blink of an eye...metaphysically speaking, anyway, since I can't blink at all. Then, darkness gave way to row after row of bright buzzy tubes. Someone wearing a blue vest took me out of my box, shook the dust offa me, and thrust me up at arm’s length.
“What’re you supposed to be?” the Blue Vest asked sharply, but before I knew it, I was flying! Like a windsock I flew, as my arms and legs flailed behind me. I looked over the scene for my destined landing zone.
Scanning...cookware.
Scanning...clothing racks.
Scanning...landing zone identified.
I flew headlong toward a box, like some kinda cage with no lid that was filled with a whole party of stuffed outcasts. Despite the impersonal approach to their work, that Blue Vest was nice to toss me like a Doug Flutie Hail Mary pass and shake the dust outta me. I didn't know what else to do but rest up for the next leg of this weird adventure. Blue Vests continued to fuss around, but after not too long they turned out the buzzy tubes and left.
A ruby glow pierced the dark air. The blank stare of something like a mechanical eye watched over me. All-seeing eyes in corners around the room gawked at other sections of whatever this enormous place was. It was nice to be in such a big, open area with so much to see after watching a strand of the sun through that dirt-smeared rectangle day in and day out ever since someone apparently had hassled and huffed a wall to pieces. Now I had to know, where was I?
I soaked in my surroundings and saw a tiny plump tiger near me.
“Psst, hey bub,” I said. No reaction. “Hey, stripes, you know where we’re at?”
“Not really.” He responded lazily, without opening his eyes. “Oh, wait, yes I do. It’s a land with no cannoli and every day is the sale of the century. Now mind your own fiberfill, big eyes.”
Sheesh, bright outlook on that fella, I thought.
“Don’t let Rutherford B. Lay-zee get you down.” A sweet voice piped up from a rosy-cheeked doll. She was holding a small felt basket and wearing a blue floral-patterned dress and cap with white frilly trim.
“Thanks, this is all new to me. I ain’t been outta that dusty basement in, like, forever.”
Forever. I wondered to myself, Had I ever left that basement before?
“Well, you’re here with us for now. I’m Blueberry Biscuit, but you can call me Lue.” She said cheerfully.
“Nice to meet you, Lue. I... don’t know who I am.” It was something I don't think I ever thought about before. My mood started to sink. I felt lost, but Lue cheered me right up.
“That’s okay. It’s great, actually. You’re more special than most of us. Uniquely crafted.”
“Really?” It was hard to imagine myself as special when I could only remember being in a dark, empty basement.
“Mmhmm. You’ll be chosen right away. Don’t you worry.” She tried to reassure me cheerfully, but now I felt nervous about this being "chosen" business.
“Chosen? What does that mean?”
Lue giggled and said, “You’re silly! Just relax. Tomorrow will be a big day for you. I can feel it in the lint on the back of my neck.”
I haven’t been anything other than me before. I didn’t even know who I was! As I thought through my situation, I couldn’t help wondering, What did it mean to be ‘chosen’?
Not long after watching the sun rise through the most clairvoyant windows I ever saw, Blue Vests turned on the buzzy tubes and puttered about. Then other people started coming into the place and talking with Blue Vests. The whole operation was surreal to me, like some kind of boondoggle cottage where people could come in and take what they wanted from the Blue Vests, but only if they presented some green rectangular portraits or shiny little swipey cards.
“So, you figure it out yet, poly-brain?” Asked Rutherford B. Lay-zee, rudely interrupting my theorizing with his snark.
“Yeah, I think I’m onto the getdown here. How long you been in?” I asked, trying to sound tough and worldly. He chuckled to himself.
“For some of us, it’s not a question of how long, but how many times. Seen a lot of kids in my day, good times with most. The flip side is seein’ ‘em grow into big people with big people problems that can't be solved by self-soothing with adorable plush faces such as yours truly.”
He smiled at me real smug like and tucked back into his continuous nap.
"Alright there, Rip van Stink-eye." I said, giving the cat a taste of his own attitude. As I turned to continue watching people, a paw came from outta nowhere and grabbed me! I was lifted from the cage, looking down on my napping frenemy and Lue, who shouted, “I knew you were special! My lint never tingles wrong!”
A person held me out in front of her like the Blue Vest who unpacked me the day before. She slapped me across the face a few times and shook me around. I guess there was still some old dust caked in my fur, or maybe she needed to relieve some stress at my expense. Either way, she got my attention. The person had glasses on her face, like the little window I was familiar with, and, for the first time that I knew of, I could see myself. Bright eyes, yellow nose, and a gorgeous smile stared back at me. What a beautiful beast I was! And of course, I wouldn’t be complete without my lucky red hat with little rusty safety pins somehow still hanging onto my luscious brown locks. Window Face put a hand into my head and began flapping my mouth open while she made strange gibberish sounds. The crackle of a fire and joyful squeals washed over me from a familiar but far-off place, filling me with warmth then it all left my mind as quickly as it started.
“Cute,” she said with a shrug and a smile as she tossed me over her forearm and looked at clothing until she was ready to give portraits to Blue Vests. I was chosen!
Window Face brought me and the mixed bag of trinkets and clothes she got from the Blue Vests outside to a giant car, or like a tiny house on wheels. It was a sun-shiny day, so we rode in her, well, let's call it a mobile home with the windows down on the way to her real house. The breeze blowing my hair was so much easier to enjoy when I was not hurtling through the sky like some clumsy puppet knockoff of a superhero. We arrived at her home, and Window Face put me on her hand again. She flung open a sliding door, and as we went in, she held me up majestically.
“Hey, folks, lookie what I have!”
A flame-haired guy and two chunky crawling miniatures of the people looked up and smiled. The small fries wore squishy balloons around their bottoms that they bounced on as they crawled closer to look me over.
“What on earth is that?” Flame Hair asked, chuckling in confusion.
“I’m a whatever, how ‘bout ya name me?” Window Face said through my mouth with a gruff voice.
As the Bubble Butts squealed with joy and grabbed at my nose, I got that fireplace feeling again, like ironing two pieces of cloth and pressing them so close that they seem to take up the same space.
It felt good to be in a home where I wasn’t alone constantly in a dirty basement or stuck with a sassy old cannoli-loving stuffed cat. There was a lot more activity here, almost too much at times, but I was put into a cozy spot on top of a pile of random stuff that was still packed in boxes. I tried my best to “hide in plane sight,” so to say, because I was on top of the box in plane view while I blended into the scene on the ground level. This brilliant piece of strategy allowed me to see a bit of the world through the sliding glass door I first entered while the family went on about their days, not paying much attention to me. Birds, squirrels, and the Bubble Butts were what I watched most of the time with a mix of neighbors walking around between their houses and their mobile homes.
Those were decent times, until I started seeing boxes again. Gobs of empty boxes came in to be packed and stacked. There was a verifiable Cardboard Mountain in the place! Seriously, the USGS should have mapped and observed it for threats of avalanche. I knew it was just a matter of time before I ended up packed inside a corrugated tomb again, maybe for good this time. As Cardboard Mountain maxed out the height of the house, I began seeing some new faces in the place. The new faces were taking boxes from Cardboard Mountain and moving them to mobile homes that would transport them to some other place. Hoping someone, anyone, would pick me up and help me remember whatever was in my fluff-stuffed head before I got shut away into darkness, I laid my lanky limbs in the wonkiest way I could and stared at the people with a wild glint in my eyes. One of the new faces seemed interested in me. His cheeks were fuzzier than a lot of others, kinda like me. When Fuzzy Cheeks eventually picked me up, I began to feel closer to the distant fireplace and laughing children again. Along with the laughter, I heard the voice of an older person saying something that amused the children:
“Tell me about your day. Come talk to…” I heard, but it faded before whatever the man said next as Fuzzy Cheeks put me down and got into his mobile home.
I was put into a box, like I expected, and driven to some new place, presumptuously to be unpacked and shaken out by a Blue Vest again. I stayed in the box for a while. Just me and some itty-bitty clothes and I couldn’t tell ya what else in a dark, closed box. No access to a dingy window. not a single beam of yellow sun.
In complete darkness a mind can play tricks, even one made with wispy plastic fibers. I kept sharp by focusing on the fireplace, the laughter, and the old man’s voice. I also remembered Lue’s encouraging words, “uniquely crafted.” As I thought about it, I remembered seeing a tiny list sticking out of one of Rutherford B. Lay-zee's haunches, like a record of his handlers. It told where he was made by some person, sent to some other place by some other person, and then was claimed by some rogue, "Alex," who scrawled their name over the typed words with black marker. No wonder he didn’t seem to feel lost. He was born to be lost and then found, forgotten then rediscovered brand new. I didn’t know why I was born, but it felt different than that. I didn't have a list telling me where I was from or where to go, but I felt close to finding something important.
“I know we still have that puppet somewhere!”
A familiar voice sounded far off, then footsteps thumped down a set of stairs...they were thumping toward me! Sounds of rummaging surrounded my box.
“I KNOW we have it! We wouldn’t give away anything that weird.”
Easy with the ‘weird’ talk there, fella! I thought as I listened carefully, hoping the voice was talking about me. I was relieved to place the voice as Flame Hair, the big version of the Balloon Butts, and I felt glad that I was in a new place but still with the same people. Suddenly my box flaps flew open. Flame Hair’s face lit up when we saw each other. He reached in and carefully pulled me out into the light, announcing proudly to the whole house, “I found it!”
Holding my face up to his level, he said, “Do you want to host a show about museums with me? We'll go on all sorts of adventures!”
His excitement was infectious. The guy's like the Typhoid Mary of teaching science; it just kinda oozes outta him. Flame Hair brought me to another familiar face, Fuzzy Cheeks from our Cardboard Mountain encounter. Fuzzy Cheeks put me on his hand and started talking to Flame Hair. The distant fireplace lit up as my mind was again transported into the past:
Children laughed while playing, then the old man said, “Settle down, settle down. Tell me about your day. Come talk with old Odis.”
Stopping in their tracks, the children sat obediently at the old man’s feet like they were trained by the Dog Whisperer. You remember that guy, Cesar Chavez? I'm catching up on the reruns. Anyways, the children roared with laughter as bushes of nose-hairs would curl into each other when the old man squinched his face a certain way, keeping the children's laughter rolling. Looking at me, he would play it straight. “Do you see how they laugh at me, Odis? How cruel they are to an old grandfather with a perfectly healthy crop of nasal whiskers!”
Time is difficult to grasp as a mostly inanimate object. Tuning out what Fuzzy Cheeks was saying through my mouth, I bathed in the warm memories of fireside stories shared between my maker, his grandchildren, and myself. As it happened, the crafty old man had sewn me together out of shag carpet remnants and pieces of leftover felt from clothing that he also made. I still don’t know how long I was in the old man's basement, but I did see how I ended up there alone:
“Well, my furry friend,” the old man said as I looked up at him, his eyes peering over that healthy thicket of nose hairs, “the children have all grown up on us, and I am leaving this place to them now. You are a vessel of joy, old Odis. No one can deny you that.”
After his closing remarks, my maker reached into the box and patted my chest with a wet glimmer in his eyes. He gently folded my arms across my body, walked up the stairs, and closed the door to the dusty, cobwebbed basement.
“Hey, Brad, whaddaya think of this voice?” I heard Fuzzy Cheeks say to Flame Hair in a whimsical Southern drawl. It could work for us. I saw in my visions that the old man used a lot of different accents in his stories, so I was excited to explore sounds with these goofy guys. They had one of those all-seeing eyes pointed at me like the Blue Vests, but it was way more inviting with Window Face controlling it.
“My, how Barney Fife of you!" Flame Hair said. "We can roll with that for now, but what should we name him?”
All eyes were on me. I had summoned Fuzzy Cheeks back at Cardboard Mountain, so I tried getting into his mind again. Focusing all the puppet energy I could muster on my newfound memories, I stared intensely into his eyes.
“Something’s telling me…heee’s...Odis. His name is Odis. With a ‘d,’” Fuzzy Cheeks declared. YES! My message was received!
“Odis with a ‘d’,” Flame Hair chuckled. “Yeah, I like it. Let’s have a chat about our show and get to know each other, Odis.”
And so, Brad and I started uncrating adventures. I was happy to be bringing joy again like it was out of style. It kind of is lately, if you notice how often some people make the opinions and choices of complete strangers a condition of their own joy. Any-ole-who, my point is, the next time you’re feeling down or trapped in a box, hopefully a figurative one and not an actual box like I was, think of a time when you brought joy to someone who needed it. Remember that you are uniquely crafted to share that joy in the you-est way that you can, too!
Credits
Dripping font: Solstice of Suffering Regular