Short Stories From 10 Years Ago – March 8, 2004
Two Faced Franklin
Short Stories From 10 Years Ago – March 8, 2004 – I’m not sure why, but once we reach adulthood, we’re supposed to behave like ‘grown-ups’ all the time. Why? I recall as a teenager being told by teachers and parents to ‘act your age’.
This is a mystery to me – this acting your age. I certainly understand the need to conduct myself in a professional manner when dealing with clients. A certain decorum is required when discussing a person’s business requirements and entering into a set of negotiations. I would expect nothing less.
It’s certainly prudent to monitor my personal and social behaviour and to avoid offending or hurting another person’s feelings. Now having acknowledged social norms and mores, what about just goofing around with friends? A lot of us are far too serious. Little automated people bent on being proper.
I, for one, am trying to be outrageous more often, and the older I get, the easier it’s becoming. Thank heavens. No, I’m not about to moon a passing bus or unleash my “girls” in front of a police officer, but I’m striving to lighten up – not just a little – but a lot.
My brother Eric and his first wife Jeannie and Scott (a long ago beau of mine) and I used to spend most week-ends at our cottage at Sauble Beach. One summer we found a cloth doll, I can’t remember where, but probably at a flea market or country auction. He stood about eight inches high and was stuffed with some sort of soft filler, so he was very pliable.
He had a stupid grin on his face and a daisy on his tummy. His purple jumper was imprinted right on the fabric that made up his body and he had orange shoes. We named him Franklin. We didn’t notice until we got him back to the cottage that his front and back sides were identical. We immediately changed his name to Two Faced Franklin. That was the beginning of a comical journey that lasted until we all went our separate ways in life.
Our cottage on the Sauble River was an open floor plan space with a wall of windows over-looking the river. The two bedrooms, separated by a seven foot high wall, occupied the south end of the cottage. The roof was peaked and neither bedroom had a ceiling – both were open to the top of the peak. A perfect place for Two-Faced Franklin to learn to fly. When we went to bed at night we used to wing him back and forth over the wall between the two bedrooms. On any given week-end he might be found hanging upside down by one leg in the shower stall, in the freezer wrapped around a package of chicken thighs, suspended from a car aerial, in the bottom of a picnic basket, tied to the steering wheel of a car or lying on the sofa with his arm in sling and a bandage on his head.
One Sunday, as we were closing up the cottage, Two face Franklin was nowhere to be found. Eric and Jeannie denied any knowledge of his whereabouts, and Scott and I surmised that he might have fallen out of the car during the week-end. A few weeks went by and we eventually had a memorial service for Two Faced Franklin. I came home from work a week later and found a post office notice for Registered Mail in the letter box. I didn’t have a car at the time and I grumbled all the way to the bus station about ‘stupid’ registered mail and how it was probably some sort of a notice from the government, because who else would be sending me anything by registered mail.
I picked up my package, went off to have a coffee at a café, and unwrapped my treasure. To my amazement Two Faced Franklin was staring at me from the bottom of the box. I immediately called Eric and Jeannie, who denied any knowledge of this amazing resurrection. Two Faced Franklin returned to the cottage and a few weeks later I tried the same scheme with Eric and Jeannie. They were suspect and ignored the registered mail notice. I eventually had to go back to the post office to retrieve him. Two Faced Franklin went to beach parties, BBQ’s and dinners and flew around the cottage at all hours of the day and night. You couldn’t walk through a door without him winging past your head. We talked to and about him as if he was a real person. Then Scott and I broke up and Eric and Jeannie divorced, and life moved on.
A couple of years ago I went to see Tom Hanks’ new movie Castaway and his relationship with Wilson the basketball reminded me of Two Faced Franklin, and I started to wonder what had happened to him. Last summer in one of the more crazed phases of my basement ‘stuffectomy’, I was rooting through an old trunk, and there wrapped in a plastic bag at the bottom of a box was Two Faced Franklin. I was utterly delighted.
I last saw his funny little mugs about twenty-five years ago. He sits on top of the book case in my office these days. He’s a little frayed around the edges and his colours aren’t as bright anymore, but he still has that ridiculous grin on his faces. He’s a bit old to be flying around the house now, so instead he sits as a reminder of a time when I wasn’t so serious.
A time in my life when I could behave like a kid and laugh until I cried, instead of ‘acting my age’. One fine day very soon, I’m going to take Two Faced Franklin out to dinner at a first-class restaurant and order him a glass of wine. Then when he’s relaxed and feeling fine, and not suspecting my evil machinations, I’m going to take him to the post office and send him to Eric by registered mail. Who says you can’t go home?
