Super Heroes on Shows

So the kids are six and three now.

When we were young we talked about how things were “on TV”. Rinah talks about how things are “on shows”, because the object upon which they are watched now has multiple purposes including “home school”. So in a way school and TV are the same.

Not really.

A couple of weeks before Rinah’s sixth b-day there was this wooden (real wood, not composite) child’s desk - the kind with slanted top that opens - displayed in front of the lo-fi thrift store located in a garage by the (ancient) Army Navy store and one of the Vietnamese bodegas. There’s still a few of these old-ass stores in this neighborhood that have been there since long before white flight a few decades ago, and you’re like, the only reason this place can still be in business is because there’s no rent, hardly any employees (like the owner and their two sixty year old cousins) who are probably getting food stamps or social security.

It was one of those things where you think you see the thing driving by, consider it for two blocks: “was that a wooden child’s desk?”, “do we want a wooden child’s desk?”, “do I have time for this?”. And then you go back and it IS a wooden child’s desk. Real wood (not composite crap). With a little bench. Pencil ditch at the top. It’s quite wobbly.

“What are you selling this for?” Twenty-five bucks.

“Do you wanna sell it for fourteen? I’ve got fourteen bucks on me.”

“Sure”, says one of three thick, weathered sitters of junk chairs, “I can do that.”

David Alley helped make it magnificent. Hurray for awesome neighbors and close friends.

Anyway, Rinah goes, “Ya know how super-heroes on shows - Ya know how like, lotsa super heroes on shows are like, really big and muscular up here with square heads - no with little round heads”, she gesticulates a round top with square chin, “and like really tiny legs?”

7/08/2015