Dialogue
When I was 9 or 10, my dad took me to a feed store and bought me a baby chick. This was totally atypical behavior. We lived on an ordinary suburban street where the most outlandish pet was my pal Lisa’s gerbil. We were a family of conformists. And we weren’t farmers.
So why the chick? To this day, I don’t know, but it was definitely Dad’s idea. I was happy to go along, and I had a name in mind: Mr. Fluff, after a chicken I’d seen on “Captain Kangaroo.” I’d already named a cat that, but the poor thing met an early demise, so the name was available.
At the feed store, a clerk showed us an enclosure and lifted the lid to reveal what seemed like hundreds of fluff balls. I gazed at their little faces, befuddled. I had a strategy when selecting a kitten, but I really couldn’t detect any personality differences here. I tried to sound confident when I said, “This is the one,” but who was I kidding?
Mr. Fluff, who, despite the name, was presumably female, lived in a cage in our garage. When she was a little bigger, feathers replacing fluff, my dad took a string, made a slip knot, pulled it over her foot and voila, Mr. Fluff had a leash. Now I could trot her around the cul-de-sac where we lived. I never had a dog, and you know what cats are like, so it was thrilling to have an animal under my control, more or less.
Chickens grow fast, and before long, Mr. Fluff was on the verge of adulthood. Around that time, some neighbors laid down the law: “That girl cannot walk around here with a chicken on a leash.”
That was it. Our brief foray into nonconformity was over, and it was time to bid Mr. Fluff adieu.
My father had one last crazy idea up his sleeve. One afternoon, we put Mr. Fluff in the Oldsmobile and headed for a small neighborhood zoo. Once there, Dad tucked Mr. Fluff under his jacket. We walked to the enclosure for barnyard animals and found a loose portion of the fence. Dad bent it back and ushered Mr. Fluff through the gap. That was that. Mr. Fluff never looked back, immediately an indistinguishable face in the flock. It was a happy ending for Mr. Fluff – a home where she was not in danger of ending up on a dinner plate.
That all came to mind while reading “The Birds & the Bees” (page 66). To me, the whole Mr. Fluff escapade epitomizes summer. I like to think that all the heat and humidity activates something in us, allowing us to explore the world with fewer rules and restrictions. We can try something new, act out of character. If you want to shake things up this summer, we’ve got dozens of ideas to get you started. Read on, and join me in my vow to make this a season of surprises.