The first is, clean, hard, glaring white. Standing on three legs in the center of the room, it glistens in the light, proud of its place at center stage. It wants the attention of all. If i try to ignore it, it screams at me to look at it. It grabs me and drags me into its center and holds me there. It does not frighten me, i like to pretend it isn"t there. I giggle as i turn my back to it and wrap my arms around myself trying in vain to resist it's call and not turn around. But it always wins, i always turn around. It's magic you see, and it cheats. .
If i close my eyes, i can almost see the negative of it still imprinted on my eyelids.
The other is big but not as large as the first. It stands on four legs. It is black and fuzzy and warm. It leans against the wall in the corner, patiently waiting for someone to fetch it. I find that i smile every time i see it and long to give it a hug. Its fuzziness seems to attract me as well as all the dust it can possibly grab on to. In my mind it is like a puppy, sitting and watching til someone scratches its ears and then filled with joy it wags its tail. "Course, it doesn"t have a tail to wag, but i can feel how happy it is when we pull it out of the corner. It does not need to demand my attention, i give it because i want to.
I cannot remember exactly where i met them. Maybe it was in Bible school or on Romper Room, an old television show for kids, but i reckon where i met them is not so important as the impact they had on my life. That is why i remember them, because they each became a part of me.
They were storyboards. Now i don"t know if you remember storyboards or not. They may have been extinct by the time you were born. But i remember them. .
The white one had little rubbery pieces that stuck to it. You put the pieces on the board to make pictures that told a story. A lady would read a story from a book and one of us kids would stick the pictures up. Sometimes the lady did both, but i liked it better when a kid did the pictures.