baby ate him like a man

We visited our optometrist's office this weekend where there is a children's nook full of books and toys.  Anya and Elias decided to occupy themselves with building a castle out of blocks, working from opposite sides.  This kind of sibling simpatico is more rare than I'd like it to be, but an absolute joy to my heart when it occurs.

While they placed block on block I squeezed past them and into the nook.  I discovered a bookshelf that was hidden around the corner that is not visible from the waiting room proper.  On a middle shelf was an old weathered set of Childcraft books with an "annual" from 1973.  This placed the collection squarely in my early childhood and as I read the titles I felt the surreal sensation of time bending in my brain.

I pulled out a volume or two and flipped through the pages.  The images were vaguely familiar, but did not elicit any strong feelings.  Then I spied the volume "Poems & Rhymes" and I felt my heart skip a beat.  Every image on every page brought on a torrent of memories.  This was the volume that I'd spent the most time going through as a rambunctious boy.  It had held my attention and taught me the traditional poems and rhymes of youth.

One picture in particular has remained crystal clear in my memory since that time in the early seventies.  It was the Fishy-Fishy in the Brook poem.  It fascinated me because it was a real picture taken with a camera, not a flat illustration.  I wasn't sure how it had been made which was part of the fascination.  It had reminded me  of claymation films, like "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" that was on TV every winter.

In the late eighties I was a student at Indiana Wesleyan University and took a World Literature class with Mary Brown.  I was an avid reader and this class felt more like a fun college interlude than a course requirement.  Some of my classmates would brag about how little they'd read of the assigned literature which for me was like having a gourmet meal set before you and
thinking it was cool that you'd only eaten a few peas from the plate.

That first day of class Prof Brown had a handful of cutout goldfish that she was giving out as rewards for students being able to finish a poem/rhyme/lyric that was on the theme of "fish."  I secured my first fish by finishing a line from Dan Fogelberg's song "Longer."  A few fish awards later she recited the first half of Fishy-Fishy in the Brook.  I think mine was the only hand to go up for this one and that image from the Childcraft book came vividly to mind as I finished the line  "...Mommy fried him in a pan, and baby ate him like a man."

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