The Petey Story

I notice I've been talking a lot about gifts here - gifts that Joey gave (or planned to give) me, gifts I gave (or planned to give) him, identical or matching gifts that others gave us.  One reason for this, of course, is that these objects are the most visible physical traces of our relationship, and they immediately conjure up stories, shared tastes, etc.  They are pretty powerful prompts for reflection.  Another reason is the season: Christmas is a little over a week away, and normally I'd be shopping for his gift (Joey was always the easiest person on my list, because, if in doubt, I could always just get him something that I would like to have myself), and then we'd be shopping together for other people's presents, often in a last-minute sprint through Oklahoma City on Christmas Eve.

Additionally, our parents both have birthdays in December, and for a long time it was my job to remind Joey of this fact and to get the gift ball rolling well in advance of the actual day.  We almost always collaborated on birthday and Christmas gifts for our parents, and I'm sure (if I could bear to look) that I have dozens of emails between Joey and me with subject headings like "yer mother" or "yer father" (or, in our more juvenile moods, "yer butt") in which we're working out precisely what we're going to get them for their birthdays and then Christmas, who'll pay for the birthday gift and who'll pay for the Christmas gift, whether one or both of us might have already bought something independently of the other, and so on.  This collaboration started, as I say, because Joey, until quite recently, needed a little prompting to get these things sorted out in time, and I was the self-appointed prompter.  If we collaborated on these things, then we could both be sure that they'd get done.  We always sent separate birthday cards, however (as we did Mother's Day and Father's Day cards), which I imagine was a nice thing for our parents, because you never quite knew when Joey's cards would arrive.  When it did, often many days after the day of the actual event, it would have been like having another birthday all over again.

There's a story that's been running through my head for several months now regarding a gift Joey once gave to me, many years ago, and I'm going to try to get it right:

I was probably ten - Joey was probably six - and we were deep into our Pound Puppy phase.  They all had unique voices and personalities and places in the Pound Puppy hierarchy, and we spent an awful lot of time playing with them.  I'm not sure what we did with them, exactly, but we must have concocted scenarios wherein they would explore whatever environment they encountered - Grandmother's back yard, Grandma and Grandpa's basement, our minivan - and establish who would go where, what sorts of food they'd eat, etc.  It was much more exciting than it sounds.  Well, I had recently lost one of my Pound Puppies, a secondary character named Petey who was not one of the leaders, like Patch or Scrounger, but of whom I was nevertheless quite fond.  He may have been like number four or five in rank, maybe a Lieutenant Colonel or so.  He was white with a squishy horizontal face and brown ears.

I remember being very upset at his loss, and even contemplating going to the Kay-Bee in the mall for a replacement.  But Christmas was coming, and I had a hunch someone might get me a new Petey then.  Sure enough, Christmas morning at Grandmother's house I picked up a package that I knew was a Pound Puppy box - by this point we could easily recognize the shape and weight of these boxes - and inside, sure enough, was a new Petey.  From Joey.  I pretended to be thrilled, but I wasn't: it was the wrong puppy, the wrong model.  He was white with brown ears all right, but instead of a squishy horizontal face he had a squishy vertical one, and his spots were in the wrong place.  He was essentially the same model as Joey's favorite puppy, Rocky, but white instead of Rocky's tan.  I was horribly upset.

A while later, after the other presents had been opened, I was talking to my mother in the den.  I was asking her when we could go to the store to exchange this new Petey for the right one.  I may have asked her if she had a receipt, for she obviously had been the one to buy it, not my six-year-old brother.

Suddenly, behind me, I heard Joey say, "You don't like him?"

I looked at my mother, and my mother shot me the kind of look that is conventionally described as "pregnant with significance."  It was the first time I understood how a look could convey more than words.

I turned to Joey and said, "No, he's great.  I just, uh, may need to change him a little."  Then I started studying his face, trying to figure out if there was a way to make him look right.

I soon discovered that Pound Puppies were really quite simple, architecturally speaking.  Their faces were smooshed into shape by means of a few thin knotted threads that stuck through their cheeks and gave them dimples, thus making their faces either long and narrow or flat and jowelly.  Having discovered this, I went to the kitchen for some scissors, cut the existing threads, got some thread and a needle from Grandmother's vast supply, and spent much of the remaining afternoon figuring knotting and threading, figuring out how to smoosh the new Petey's face together in the right way.

Eventually I succeeded.  The new Petey (Petey 2.0, if you will) still didn't look quite right - the spots were still wrong - but I felt that I had acted quite heroically, saving my brother's feelings while also getting, more or less, what I wanted.  This was to be a skill I would improve upon, with all sorts of people, in coming years.

I'm not sure why that story's been returning to me so often lately.  By no means is it the only Joey story floating through my head, but it is a persistent one.  I think it may have to do with the way it forces me to shift my perspective and to see things from his point of view.  For me, as I said, buying gifts for Joey was pretty easy, even fun, because I could just pretend that I was shopping for myself.  But I wonder if, after this incident (but by no means solely because of this incident), he ever experienced much anxiety about buying gifts for me, about giving me things that would meet with my approval.  And this prompts a more general set of questions, which, shockingly, had not occurred to me until recently.  How much did he worry about earning my approval?  What else did I do to make him feel like he needed to earn my approval?  And did I do enough to show him that he had earned it, or that anyway my approval shouldn't really matter all that much?

I'm sure he knew how much I loved and admired him - I have no real regrets there - but it's natural, I suppose, to wonder.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure our mother still has Petey somewhere in her attic, along with all his Pound Puppy friends.  I expect they're going to stay there for a long, long time.