Paw-erful Imagery

Where I went to high school, Spring Branch High School, in Spring Valley (sort of a vassal suburb of Houston), Texas, our mascot was the bear, and our school motto, I swear I'm not making this up was "Paw-erful!"

Now our school colors were blue and white. OK, and scarlet. We had three school colors, blue being the most significant, white secondary, which how could it not be secondary, it's not even a real color, as any physicist will tell you.

And then scarlet, well, it was like we never even talked about the scarlet. Your school orientation materials told you that the school colors were blue, white and scarlet, but that was the last you ever heard of scarlet. It was like nobody wanted to talk about it.

Like there was some horrible secret connected to the scarlet.

Or maybe it's because not that many things rhyme with scarlet. We used to chant "Go Big Blue! Fight Big White!"

And then what are you supposed to say?

"Impugn the reputation of that harlot, Scarlet?"

"Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Scarlet?"

Like anybody's going to appreciate a subtle Bette Davis reference at some redneck high school that's got its own livestock pavilion. Well, maybe that one cheerleader.

So anyway, the scarlet wasn't something we talked about, but we knew it was there, sort of lurking in the background. Kind of like the rampant drug abuse.

Then I get this package in the mail from my old high school friend Allison, and it's some kind of a little porcelain bear and he's blue and white, and he's got a little scarlet scarf that he's wearing.

And along with that she encloses a stack of little wooden Bluebell ice cream spoons. And people who know Big Daddy know that Big Daddy loves Bluebell ice cream, which you can only buy in Texas and I guess parts of Arizona and New Mexico, and you know the spoons are so much easier to ship than the actual ice cream, right?

OK, but here's where the story gets really interesting. This morning I was making pancakes, and this one little dollop of pancake got fried separately from the main body of pancake, and darned if it isn't the spittin' image of my little stuffed animal night night friend, Mr. Peep Peep.

And then I thought, well, wouldn't this be a great murder mystery if the bear, the spoons and the macabre duckling-like pancake globule were the only clues?

Except who would get murdered? I can't be murdered, obviously, because I'm the narrator. And Allison can't be murdered because she's the red herring, if not the actual killer.

Oh, I know, how about we murder one of those snooty kids from that hoity toity high school on the other side of I-10? Memorial High School! The Memorial Mustangs! They always thought they were so hot!

I'll call it "The Case of the Memorial Mustang Who Thought She Was So Hot Until She Got Whomped Upside the Head With My Paw-erful Pancake Skillet."

Kurt "big daddy" True
18 february 2006