IF YOU BREAK IT, THEY WILL COME

When I was a child I pretended that the bookshelves were cliffs, and marched my army of small stuffed animals along the narrow paths in front of the books, on their way to conquer Rome. No, Hannibal did not have elephants in his mighty army, because I did not have a stuffed elephant, and even when play-acting, one must be a realist.
Instead, he had giant hedgehogs.

The hedgehogs were two and three times the size of Hannibal.
Who was usually either a beaver or a squirrel.

Very rarely did the stuffed woodpecker I had brought back from Switzerland have a role to play in this version of history, primarily because Roman sources did not identify woodpeckers, secondarily because he had been nailed to his perch (an ornamental tree branch) and therefore did not balance on the narrow bookshelves.

He could lie on his back, though.
Fallen in combat.



At an early age, literacy was both a blessing and a curse.
The benefit was that it allowed me to know about Hannibal and the complete absence of woodpeckers in his army, and lament the lack of elephants in mine; the negative side was that many of my classmates didn't have a clue who Hannibal was, or what I was waffling about.

That last is still a problem. Many of my contemporaries do not have the same knowledge sets. And other than the facts that baseball players wear pajamas, hit balls, and then trot in circles, I do not have a clue what they want to discuss, and their favourite past time baffles the heck out of me.

Someone once proposed dragging me to see Field of Dreams.

I have not spoken to that person since then.

Real men can be terrified.

Of boredom.



I should instead prefer to see hedgehogs charge into battle. Perhaps in the frozen wastelands of the Alps. And furry legionnaires falling off cliffs.


Aaaaaaaack! Shplatt! Well done, my prickly friend!


Doesn't that sound ever so much better than watching expectorating men in pajamas running around circularly with baseball sticks?




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