Strinkley
Getting better at the photos. Though I seem to have gotten one stuck in the banner. It’s ll so mysterious to me.
So.
Strinkley: n. — A primitive wooden elephant.
One of the items I found in my emotionally charged oubliette (the one I said I’d get back to almost two months ago).
My childhood toy, made by my father for a child of his own European generation, from a time when you had wooden wheeled toys to pull about on a string. My father, who worked in a machine shop, had fitted him out with industrial wheels, awkward and toy-inappropriate, but totally dad (see below).
They were black, but this is the general effect
Anyway, Strinkley disappeared for many years, as toys do when you’ve outgrown them. Then one day, all grown up, I was visiting my parents, and there he was again. Also the way such things happen.
“Dad,” I said, “What happened to his wheels?”
He looked indignant. “What wheels?” he said. “He never had wheels.”
There I go, remembering something that never was, that never happened. As one does.
Later, though, I looked at his feet. Each one had two little holes, carefully plugged with wood filler.
Strinkley: n. — gaslighting. I don’t know why.