Ode to Bunny

Michele made me go to the doctor on Tuesday after my fingers started growing hoards of little bubbles that, left unchecked, could potentially become self aware. Especially that particularly nasty little cluster on my left index finger. I could feel it thinking...plotting.

I hadn't been to the doctor since December 2003 when I came down with a case of walking pneumonia. We reminisced about the good old days for a while, then he scribbled some jibberish onto a piece of paper and sent me on my way. The jibberish was then taken to CVS, where a crack team of pharmacologic graphologists determined that it was in fact a perscription for Prednisone.

So I've been on steroids for three days now. There's hardly any traces of the poison whatever anymore, but now my skin is drying up and flaking like crazy. I look like I passed out in a bowl of oatmeal. I needed some moisturizer, but since I had to leave for work before Michele got home this morning, I had to find it on my own. I checked all the closets, drawers and medicine cabinets to see if she had any, but I didn't find anything. Don't all women keep moisturizer with them at all times? Actually, I'm not really sure what moisturizer even looks like, but I'd imagine it would say "moisturizer" somewhere on the label. I did find some Suave conditioner with built-in moisturizer, but I didn't want to rub shampoo all over my eyes. It wasn't the no-tears kind. So I've just been throwing some water on my face every fifteen minutes or so to keep from turning into Mumm-Ra.

Now that that's out of the way, I've got to say "Happy birthday" to my aunt Bunny. Her real name is Rose, but everyone calls her "Bunny" because when she was growing up, she once nursed an injured rabbit back to health. She'd carry it everywhere; to the park, to school, even to church. All the other kids began making fun of her and called her names. But what they didn't know, what they couldn't have known, was that the rabbit was enchanted, and thanked Bunny for her kindness by granting her three wishes. Actually, I don't really know why she's called Bunny. It's just another one of life's great mysteries.

Bunny is my dad's sister, and like I said on his birthday, whenever I stayed the night at Bunny and Nana's house, I'd always come home with a fistful of shiny new toys. Bunny never had any children of her own, which meant she spoiled us rotten. No visit to her house was complete without the requisite trip to Toys "R" Us, Child World and McDonald's. I loved the smell of her car. The scent of the Buick seat cushions mingled with her perfume and McDonald's grease. It was bliss.

Sometimes, Roger, their neighbor, would come over to visit. Roger looked like he stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He always had a pipe, a buzz cut and Drew Carey glasses. Whenever Roger was there, he'd always give me a few dollars, for no apparent reason. Remember that purple UFO that flew across the top of the screen every once in a while in the old Space Invaders game? That's kind of like what Roger was like. There was no guarantee that you'd see him, but if you did, you'd really clean up.

Roger passed away a couple of years ago, but I can still picture him sitting in my grandmother's kitchen with his pipe.

Even though we were never allowed to set foot outside for fear of getting hit by a drunk driver or being swollowed whole by the chasm in the backyard, those weekends at Bunny and Nana's house where probably the best times any kid could ask for. Nana always made french toast for breakfast. Now, it's not like I never had french toast before; I practically lived on french toast at one point. But Nana's always seemed to taste...better. Maybe it was because she had a gas oven instead of an electric one. Could the blue flames have made it taste better? Or maybe it was the maple syrup that she kept in the refrigerator. The refrigerator! It was like eating on a different planet!

Everything seemed different there. Better somehow. Like the TV. It was an older model. Big and boxy. But the same shows I watched at home sounded better at Bunny's house. It's not like she had a Dolby surround sound system or anything, but the speakers on that old TV ran circles around the ones in my parents' set. And Nana had this weird blue spherical radio. It looked like a mini blue Death Star, or Pac Man if he held his breath for too long. Even the blankets were comfier over there. They were down or something. She had one in the spare bedroom, and one for the sofa bed in the living room.

When Grampa was alive, I used to listen to his police scanner he kept on the floor in his bedroom. He was a retired cop with the Dedham Police department. He died when I was eight, and a short time later, Nana gave me his badge. I thought that was just about the coolest thing ever. It was an honor to recieve something like that, so I was understandably horrified when I lost it a few years later. My room wasn't exactly the textbook definition of "clean," but I had my own method. Basically, I'd toss everything into boxes and shove the boxes under the bed and in the closet. My mom wasn't especially impressed with this method. She'd periodically, say, whenever there was a repeat on TV, come into the room, pull all the boxes out, dump them on the floor, and make me put everything back where it "belongs." What was wrong with stuffing everything into boxes? It was off the floor, wasn't it? Anyway, something always seemed to get lost during one of these Gestapo raids, and I'd bet anything that the badge got lost in the shuffle.

So there I sat, utterly depressed that I'd let my grandfather down, until I remembered what was actually written on the badge. "SECURITY." That's when I realized, she didn't give me his police badge, she gave me his security badge from when he worked at the toll booth at the Foxboro Racetrack! I felt a little cheated, but on the other hand, I did lose the badge, so I guess I'm glad I didn't get the real one. And I'm sure it's not really lost, anyway. It's probably in that one drawer in the white bureau that won't open, along with that bug-faced bounty hunter guy from Star Wars and a couple of California Raisins.

Police scanners and weird blue radios aside, the coolest stuff in Bunny's house was kept in the basement. I usually had to sneak down there, because Nana was sure that something would inevitably fall on me and kill me, and they'd never hear it upstairs. In fact, when I actually saw the basement after hearing her description of it, I couldn't belive she was talking about the same place. You could actually walk around down there! That's more than I could say about my parents' basement. There was all kinds of cool stuff in Nana's basement; my dad's old toys, Grampa's stuff, various nick-nacks from distant lands, even a few creepy thingamabobs that still haunt me to this day. A certain plastic clown scalp comes to mind...

Bunny may have never had any kids of her own, but she sure kept herself busy. Nana doesn't have a driver's licence, so after Grampa died, Bunny became her full-time driver. And I'll be honest, I saw my share of bickering between them.

"Turn left. Now. No, now! Okay, wait for this guy. Now, turn left. No, left! Aw, geez, you missed it!"

"Ma, I'm trying to drive!"

But whatever else was going on in her life, Bunny always found time for us. She'd take us to Rocky Point, get tickets to the circus and the Disney ice shows every year. One time they actually had Herbie...on ice! Really, we probably still have the program in that one drawer that won't open.

One year, she thought she'd do something really special by getting us backstage at the circus. Most kids would have loved that, I'm sure, but...all those clowns...so many wigs...I'd rather not talk about it.

Anyway, Nana hasn't been her usual spry self the past few years, and with the exception of a few pilgrimages to Foxwoods, rarely leaves the house. So we don't see as much of her and Bunny as we used to. Bunny's never even been to my apartment, and since I've got to be out of here by Wednesday night, I guess she never will. But for all the time and energy she put into making her four nephews and one niece happy, (and now Brianna, too) I salute Bunny with the most fitting tribute I can think of. Pictures of actual bunnies taken in my parents' backyard. Happy birthday, Bunny. Thanks for everything.

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