Columns

Doughnuts, heaven, otters and unicorns

(Two years ago when my granddaughter was 8 we drove together to Riverhead. I remember this particular trip because from the time she got into the car, during a stop for doughnuts then all the way back to Shelter Island for lunch, she only stopped talking twice, and that was to breathe.)

Thanks for taking me with you, Grandma. I am a little bit hungry but not for something like chicken nuggets or chicken fingers or like that on account of how they treat the chickens. You know how they kill them? They throw them against a wall! That is so mean.

I will eat doughnuts, though. Doughnuts are good, even though they’re not good for you. But once in a while it’s OK to eat food that’s not good for you; that’s what I always tell myself. Except sometimes I tell myself that every 15 minutes and, actually, that’s not good for you. But I don’t eat doughnuts a lot and if we stop for doughnuts I’ll eat just one. One’s not going to be bad for me. A glazed and a Gatorade. Orange. No, not orange, cherry. I can get it myself.

Oh, sorry. It was an accident. At least it wasn’t glass, right? Isn’t it good that it wasn’t glass, Grandma? Sorry, I’m not laughing from dropping the Gatorade on your foot. Actually, I’m remembering at Home Depot when I ran into your foot with the cart when I was trying to bump your butt. I didn’t think your foot was so big. I knew you were mad when you sort of yelled ‘what in heaven were you thinking?’

Did you know I actually saw heaven once? I did. I saw doggie heaven and people heaven. It was when I flew to Florida. I saw a poodle right in the middle of a cloud. That’s how I knew it was doggie heaven. And in another cloud I saw Jesus and God, so that must have been people heaven.

My brother saw the devil out a different window and he was all red and fire-y. The devil I mean. Not my brother. Jesus and God and the poodle were sort of see-throughish, like the cloud. Some people don’t believe in heaven but I do now that I’ve actually seen it.

I believe in unicorns, too, because I actually saw one, but not in the clouds. I saw a picture of a unicorn and it was not faked. It was in a book of things that some people say don’t really exist, but they actually do, like aliens from outer space, and the book had an actual picture of a real, live unicorn. Not a drawing, either. It was a photograph. Mostly it was a picture of its horn, because it was hiding behind a tree, but what else could it have been? I mean, it was all sparkly and everything so it was definitely not a rhinoceros horn and everyone knows that unicorns hide from people, just like leprechauns.

And leprechauns are not from Puerto Rico like my brother said. Some of them, maybe, but most leprechauns actually come from Ireland. I know that’s true because … did you see that? That bear or something on the side of the road?

It was more on the grass than in the road. It looked like a biggish, brownish, reddish bear. Remember the time I saw that otter walking on the sidewalk that I first thought was a beaver but then realized couldn’t be because what would a beaver be doing on a sidewalk? I mean, that didn’t even make sense.

We always see something unusual if we pay attention. I do at least. Maybe we’ll see a puppy. I love puppies. But not those puppy mill places. Puppy mills are totally bad. Do you know they put the mother dogs in cages and don’t let them out to have fun or exercise or anything. Ever. All they do their whole, entire lives is have puppies and that is so mean. I would never do that to a dog or any kind of animal, not even to a mouse.

When we have lunch I’m going to have Mickey Mouse pancakes and bacon. Bacon comes from pigs, doesn’t it. I wonder if anyone throws pigs at walls. Actually, I won’t have the bacon. That way at least I’ll be saving a pig.

Are you putting down what I’m saying to write in your column? I like to write, too. But the problem is that I can’t ever think of anything to write about.