Little buddy
It was his birthday. Yep, it was, almost Christmas and “little buddy” was having a birthday party. YAY.
Filly woke up thinking about it, because it had already happened and had been fun. The party had been in Austin, and the children had all gotten a decoration of a Christmas “elf” ornament, because his favorite was Buddy the “Elf” as well as candy and cake and games and fun. Her elf ornament was already on the tree.
Buddy, like the movie, was even at the party, leading a hike, throwing snowballs and helping to pass out cupcakes with thick red frosting.
Filly got out of bed and went to put some spray calamine lotion on her ant bites. She had been crawling around in the flower beds weeding two days earlier, and the fire ants got her. But the spray really worked, and the cold feel of it stopped the itch right away.
Then she padded into the closet and got her thick knit socks she had bought that were hand made, in Colorado, and put them on and walked to look out the front window.
The new electric candy canes were still there in the yard and lit up, but the but the snow men, who were supposed to be battery operated who lit up and sang, were barely functional. The snowmen were dark, and only their singing red mouths were lit and visible. Wordless mouth contortions…lol Filly wondered if the producers had considered making solar powered snow men…and laughed at the irony of that.
Then she walked into the kitchen and found the lighter and lit the pine scented candle that her husband had received as a gift from her daughter. It smelled like fresh pine trees. And so did the little tree in the front hall that Filly had picked out at Home depot. It was thick, and small, not even six feet tall, so she could manage it by herself.
Only she had not really done the best job putting it in the tree stand because after it was fully decorated, the entire tree fell flat on the floor, breaking some of her favorite ornaments, including one her sister had made by using glue to paint dried pansies onto a glass ornament so that it was almost translucent but was also botanical. Filly still had the little bag with the tree frond glued to it, that her sister had mailed it in. Dang…
Tater had been quick to help with the repair of the fallen tree and had delighted that Filly had found the glittering star for the tree top. Filly liked the angel better but Tater loved the star so much Filly caved in to her choices.
Mister did not really worry too much about the tree, he was busy trying to make popcorn in the microwave, something he now knew how to do.
Filly noticed the tree was still standing, gratefully, and went to her chair on the kitchen table. The table was new, and when they bought it, they did not know that it was too tall for their chairs, even though the chairs were bar stool height. So because they still liked the chairs and because new chairs were really expensive, Filly had ordered chair raisers and attached them to all the chairs. The table with the chairs did not look as streamlined as before but the chairs were usable. (as long as one did not rock back in the chair). Good to keep things uplifted right?
She went and turned on her computer and watched the screen light up and thought more about the cake from the party. Just recently, she had seen online, a supposed “health czar” of San Francisco who said she was not going to ban herself from eating cake. The person was morbidly obese, which obviously was not healthy.
And eating “cake” has more than one meaning, when a person considered that some, wanted to have a cake and a cupcake too. The cupcake, being a “side piece”. Hmmmm. If that person was married, then she could in fact keep right on “eating cake”. But if she was single, then cake was morally off limits…as was gluttony…one of the seven deadly sins. And eating cake for a single person would then mean going after married men… Just plain wrong. There was right and there was wrong. Truth was not relative. That was what Filly had learned over the years. And it was good to obey the laws. Especially the laws of God.
Filly looked at the word God. When she wrote it, she knew to capitalize it. But when she asked Google a question about God, Google never capitalized God. Computers are not smart like that. There is God and there are many other false gods…and the two were not the same. Google, a computer, should know the difference, but perhaps the programmers who made it, did not know the difference and that was the problem. Hmmmm How could someone understand the word of God if they did not even understand the word God?
Proper names were supposed to be in caps. Filly thought about how Tater had given her doll baby the name “Dash” and she had written it on the baby’s birth certificate.
They had just been talking about how Tater was worried that when Dash got older he would think he was a reindeer because Santa’s reindeer Dasher sounded a lot like Dash. Tater was trying to “explain” to the baby EARLY the difference, before he got confused, how Dash was NOT the same as DASHER. lol IF only adults were as common sense as little kids.
So back to the cake, and things being in “caps” Buddy’s cake was interesting to say the least. When Buddy’s dad went to pick up the cake, the lady a lovely Hispanic woman, was so proud of the elf she had “painted” on the cake that the dad did not have the heart to tell her that she had misunderstood his instructions. He had said, put on the cake “happy 7 th BUDDY birthday”, Buddy all in caps. And instead of putting the word buddy “all in caps”, she had printed what he had said, on the cake.
Filly was laughing to herself as she thought about it. Her son laughed too. It was one of those funny things. Also funny that, though her son loved Kennedy and all his health ideas, that cake was pumped full of some kind of red food dye in the icing…lol. Would that be around next year? Did the “Buddy all in caps” have more than one meaning in other respects too?
Filly had been reading another Jack Reacher book, called Tripwire. Reacher, is what everyone called the main character, even though his name was Jack Reacher. So when he was needed by his superior officers’ daughter, because she had been kidnapped, and she was ordered to call him on the phone, she said “Hi Jack” using his first name instead of Reacher. THAT message had been a code for hijack…to let him know she needed help. And of course she got help. Words with more than one meaning. Connecting the dots…etc.
Filly decided that the words on the cake, perhaps, on a personal level, were also a conveyor of more than one meaning as well. Buddy all in caps… to her Meant all the MAGA caps. All the military caps. All the working men caps. All the ball player caps, the marching band caps, the swimmers caps. All the men and even a lot of the women, like herself who wore caps. All her buddies. Close by, and everywhere. Like her dad and his buddies… all in caps. Close by.
On a very special BUDDY birthday. In December, almost time for Jesus Birthday as well. Jesus, who represented the spiritual expression of good as a man on earth. The spiritual nature of God, made Filly think of the book her dad gave her on her Birthday by Richard Bach called “there’s no such place as far away”. The book pointed out that like all her “buddies” in caps, God was always near, always hovering, always good, always helping. In the book, the person invited to the “party” was making that point, that they were “already there”.
And like the Trip wire book, Good could not be hijacked by evil. It could do a really good job trying to trick…but it would ultimately fail. And in the book, The author had said that if a person looked up a normal family in the encyclopedia, it would show a photo of The Hobie Family (and Hobie was the name in the book of the criminal who had hijacked the identity of the real man Hobie as his actual name was Allen…He pirated many things and he even had a hook)
That same day, that she read this in the book, Filly had also read online that the pioneer woman said of her daughter’s baby, that if a person looked up “perfect”, in the dictionary (*or encyclopedia), they would see a photo of Sophia, the baby. Filly did not believe that there was any such thing as random coincidences. So Hijack was connecting the dots…and all the people in caps were in fact buddies.
Some “buddies” might need some convincing to believe it, though and Filly liked how, in a conversation between two disagreeing individuals, her best tactic was to “see the perfect man”. When Filly did this, she focused on the good things or qualities that the seeming opposition, was expressing, and somehow that brought about harmonious discussion instead of arguments. It was powerful. It was God ordained.
GOD, all in caps…represented by thousands and millions of buddies. Every person their name, a proper name, had to begin with a cap. Filly smiled. It was clever. It was the Truth that there were So MANY buddies like the Richard Bach book, that they were already there. Good was already here.
Happy birthday Little Buddy, all in caps, Happy Birthday Baby Jesus.