Alia and the First Grade Talent Show

Recently, experiencing an unusually strong wave of Friday afternoon procrastination, I responded to an email with an animated file of a little boy who was dancing in a way that would put the latest ballroom dancing competition participant to shame if only for the spirit behind it. 

This little guy had the moves and was not afraid to use them.   It wasn’t until later that I realized why I had felt so strongly about this boy and his dancing.   This boy was me.   I had done this exact thing, minus the video camera (which hadn’t yet been invented for personal use) when I was in the first grade.

What follows is my recollection with a smattering of observation from 33 years hence.

 

Alia and the First Grade Talent Show

                I’m not sure exactly when it was announced that our school would be holding a talent show.   I’m not even sure how I came to the idea that I would do a dance routine ala the currently popular Saturday Night Fever except that I seem to recall my step-sister Tracy and her friends mimicking routines and my watching them do so.  Each in their satin jackets, they argued and fussed about what each dance was called and how to execute them for hours on Saturday afternoons.

I want to think it was “Funky Town” I chose for my entry, but something tells me it might have been “Le Freak”.   Knowing what I know now about “Le Freak”, I’m going to continue under the “Funky Town” delusion if you don’t mind.  

                You know, I don’t even remember how it is I came by a .45 single of the song or how I signed up,  but there I was in the gym with the little black disc in its paper sleeve.  I clutched it so tightly to my chest while waiting on the wooden bleachers for my turn that I had to keep replacing the little widget which kept the 45 on the record player.  Anyone younger than I  am will more than likely not remember those, but Google tells me they’re called “spiders’.

                Since this is more about what I remember and not what I don’t, suffice it to say that the concrete details of how I had come to this point apparently never made it to the memory file cabinet or at best, are misfiled and I will stumble upon them later.  This next part, though…this part is crystal clear.

                It was almost my turn to audition but I was not nervous.  Coming off of my previous critical acclaim as “Susie Snowflake” in kindergarten and my stoic portrayal of The Marine for the Veteran’s Day lesson earlier that year, I had it in the bag.  I had been watching carefully and it was going to be simple.  That-that,  then this and that and turn for as long as it takes for the record to play.  Simple.

                The principal of my school, who was a thin, birdish woman with a severely short haircut sat with a tall woman who had Farrah Fawcett feathered bangs.   I am still fascinated by how feathering works, by the way.  I think she was the combined music and art teacher. 

There they were sitting behind a folding table under the basketball hoop, each with black and white theme notebooks and each with a blue Bic ball point pen.  Actually, this moment might be why I feel compelled to buy these pens when I see them, with their transparent barrels and small blue caps which haven’t changed since 1970.   I love those pens.

                The Farrah Fawcett lady called me over and stood to take  the record from me, raising her eyebrows at the title of the song before placing on the player and setting the arm.

                “Okay.” She said as she went to retake her metal folding seat. “Show us your routine.”

                The first few notes of the song got by me before I found my rhythm and I began performing the moves I had seen my step-sister do, over and over.  When coming back from a spin on the fifth repetition, I noticed a glance passing between the two women which at the time I interpreted as “Good gracious, how did we not know that we had this kind of talent here?  Right here at, Presumpscott Elementary, we have such grace and style and it has passed under our noses as this peculiar little girl!”

                Having been in their shoes as an adult, I’m pretty sure now that that look meant “Good gracious, how on earth do we sit through this without laughing?” 

Nevertheless, I danced.  I danced and I danced and when I felt I had done it in one place too long, I started dancing from corner to corner of the rectangle laid out for jump shots.   By that point, I was ready for the song to be over, but it played on and on I danced.  I left the comfort of the learned routine and went tribal, calling upon the synthesized music and bassline to tell me what my body would do.   I worked it. Oh yes, I did

                Eventually, the song wound down and the arm automatically returned to its carriage.  A gym, if you remember, is nothing but noise.    The only sound that could be heard was the soft whirr of the record player as the turn table revolved.   Farrah Fawcett looked at the principal.  The Principal returned her gaze and they kept on looking at each other until someone behind me giggled.

                It was then that The Principal turned slowly back to me, as if she was using those moments to call upon every ounce of poise and grace she possessed.   I know that now.   At the time, I thought they were trying to conjure the words for my magnificence.

                “Thank you.” She said.  “Ahh….that was nice.   Did you ..um…learn that on your own?”  I had never heard The Principal use “Um” before.  She was one of those ladies who corrected you for saying “ain’t” and wouldn’t give you what you were sent to the office to retrieve without replacing “Can I” with “may I”.   I must have really amazed her, I thought.

                “Yes.” I answered. “Well…my step sister taught me some.  I made up the rest.”

                She glanced back at Farrah Fawcett again and then back to me.  “I see.”

                Farrah cleared her throat and thanked me as well before they both sent me back to Mrs. Laughlin’s classroom. 

                Some time  went by and an announcement came that the Principal and Farrah Fawcett had thought very, very hard about everyone’s entry and since there were so many (and mine was so interesting, I thought to myself. Clearly, they were just going to offer me First Place and forget the show…) that they had called for second auditions.  

                Second auditions?   I had wowed them the first time, sure, but that had been improvised…off the cuff…they really expected me to do that again?   Now, for you adults, logic is going to tell you that it would have been that way anyway, because there was still the show to do.  My logic, which is non-linear even now, did not allow for a repeat performance as good as the one before.   There was no way.  It was a “one and done”so to speak.  I would have to do the whole thing again, replicating the free style.  How was I going to do that?

                In the end, my second audition was lackluster.  This was mostly due to the fact that not only could I not repeat the improvised portions of the routine, but by that point I had forgotten the rehearsed parts as well, as children do when something more pressing replaces the events of the past.  Chocolate milk for lunch or the fact that you’ve been scolded for licking the red macaroni pieces that were meant for the art project, for instance.   You see, it’s not that children are forgetful as much as they make more room for the present and as life moves along, adults seem to make more room for the past and future.

I was let down lightly with a “Keep working on it.”  I watched the show with my class, slightly miffed that I wasn’t in it, but mostly relieved.  My older sister, who already found me an endless source of embarrassment, was eternally grateful as I found out later but that’s her story to tell. 

The winners were a pair of brothers who lip-synced in costume to an old folk song and the runner up was a girl who could play the theme from “Days of Our Lives” on the piano.  I learned through this experience that jumping into things and expecting instant success isn’t the best approach most of the time and since then, I’ve tried quite a few things, but have yet to reach the level of fame and fortune I was expecting for my debut at Presumpscott School.

 This is most true when it comes to writing.  I’ve been doing it since I could hold a pencil and make scratches into words, but I have never been widely published and I am certainly not living in the brick loft apartment in New York City my high school self predicted.   The best I can do is take Farrah’s advice and keep working on it.

Confessions and Corrections

To the siblings of challenging children, I offer this.  I was a challenging child, but as is evident below, not as challenging as everyone thought I was because this poem is probably 90% true.

                Confessions and Corrections

It’s possible that I, intent on helping, dumped the flour.

Perhaps I scattered raisins, if you found them at that hour.

Or spilled the milk you stepped in and in which you trailed your robe.

But I didn’t hatch the plan to cook the breakfast, so you know.

I’m sure I stole a cookie from the plate they meant for guests.

I’m likely why you found that bug in the pocket of your vest.

I’m the curr who gave the kittens yarn.  They liked the red!

But I have no recollection of dead frogs under my bed.

I did swing on the clothes line which bent the pulley south.

I did turn on the hose, which drenched my dress. I missed my mouth.

I buried his Darth Vader, who was never seen again.

But I didn’t draw the face upon the wall with marker pen.

If pressed, I will admit I took those crayons from the cup,

So we needn’t cover how the lawn Madonna got made up.

And, I often wore the ice cream given to me as a treat,

But I didn’t drop the gum wad you found on the sofa seat.

I did try to make coffee with some tinfoil and a match

You only found the remnants.  I was successful with one batch.

And though you might not paint me as the apple of your eye

I’ll remind you that, in fact, you have survived.  And so did I. 

Memories, mostly.

                I have vivid memories of my childhood, but as with most people, there are missing pieces.   The parts between the bits I remember and the ones I don’t are nebulous, like watching night traffic through a frosted window, and logically I am aware that time must have marched on but I have no recollection how Point A became Point B. 

                I’m convinced, however, that for an event to become a memory for a child it has to have affected her greatly in one way or another because days where nothing happened don’t matter.  Not for a kid, anyway.  As adults, we relish them but for a child events become memory only if it's the tickle of a good time or the punch of something awful and your brain uses all of your senses to take snapshots of the goings on for recall later.   That’s how it works.

                You smell curry and you are instantly back at your grandmother’s farm house where scent is joined by woodsmoke and bacon in your mind.  Or you hear a truck horn that sounds like a fog horn which reminds you of days spent at Two Lights State Park where, one day,  a rogue wave drenched your other grandmother.  You had laughed, but no one else thought it was funny.  Not then.  And they said “serves you right” when a seagull stole your frenchfries.

The sight of a certain toy in a vintage resale shop brings memories out of that strange file cabinet of experiences and opens it up for you to see.   You remember with a smile that you had that exact Fisher Price Farmyard set with the rubber animals and the little lever on the front which simultaneously opened the barn door and produced a low, somewhat alarming, noise from somewhere within,. Presumably, it was meant to simulate a cow but sometimes sounded like a duck.    And then, you remember the Sesame Street play set too.  And didn’t you have the Weebles Tree House?

                The unfortunate thing about good memories -  the tickles- is that they don’t ever seem to come without a chaperone.  You never seem to get only good memories for very long, do you?  For instance, oh, how you had loved playing with that Barnyard Set, with it’s now recalled Little People, and the strange blocky tractor and you smile and you remember until, inevitably, you come to wonder whatever had become of that play set and the bad memory punch comes when you are reminded that you probably had to leave it behind when you went to live with your mother across town or might it have been part of one your step-mother’s yard sales?

                My sister will likely remember what happened to it.  In our adult lives, I have come to understand that she will have remembered most of our shared experiences much differently than I have.  It’s inevitable in families with more than one child and the reason for this phenomenon is simple.   We are different people with different souls.   She is not ticklish in the same places that I am, and she would have felt the punches in different places as well. 

                Having said that, what follows is a story I wrote some time ago...because the one I want to tell you (the story of Alia and the Talent Show) doesn't want to be told yet.  Parts of this, my sister may have remembered differently, and parts of this she will not remember at all because they are not true.   That’s the fun part of memories.  They play good cop/bad cop with your psyche, true,  but, they are your own and you can embellish them however you like.

The Bike

It was blue, that bike.  I haven't consciously thought about it in years although it does sometimes come to me in the dreams of replayed childhood.  Blue and sparkly.  The kind of sparkly that you only see on the worn out kiddie rides at county fairs these days.  By the time it had come into my possession, the white banana seat had grayed under layers of the adhesive of long lost tape jobs, the flared handlebars were speckled with the rust of a thousand dewy mornings, and the spokes bent where baseball cards had been attached with clothespins. 

I didn't care. I loved that bike.

And it wasn't until I started describing this bike that the memory of how I came by it returned to me like a developing Polaroid. Slowly, and with ever more detail until the clarity of it broke my skin. 

My mother had driven me to the house my sister and I had lived in with my father.  I was seven years old when we left with our clothes and a few toys. On the last day of second grade, it was as if we had stepped through a veil from one life into another, and yet, here we were -  back again.  Now, as a nine year old, it seemed so surreal to return to this place, although at the time I didn't have the word "surreal" to attach to that tilting feeling.

When we arrived, the owner of the house, the man I had only known as "The Landlord" was waiting on the stoop.  A tall man, at least to me, and gaunt he had scared me at first but had easily won me over by introducing me to the wonders that lie in a roll of Necco wafers. 

I tugged my mother's hand.  "Mom, can I go in?"  She spoke to deny me, but the Landlord interrupted her.

"It's empty." he said, standing to hold the screened door open, "She can't hurt nuthin'" My mother let go of my hand, and I slipped past him and he shut the door behind me.   My eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light of the living room and I was glad that the faint smell of this house was still present, not quite masked by the Pine Sol. 

The landlord had spoken the truth.   It was empty. The furniture I remembered was no longer there, not even the footprints of the heavy recliner and the matted place in the carpet where the rocking chair had been erased by a rug cleaner of some kind.

From the door I could see the dining room where a big oak table had once held my birthday cake.  The doorway to the bathroom where I had won a game of hide and seek by crawling into the front loading washing machine.  Crossing the rug, I followed the el of the dining room into the kitchen, where one day our black lab had gotten so excited that she put her paw through the glass.  

From the door I watched my mother and the Landlord stand in the back yard talking. He looked up and startled, I backed away, deciding to go to the one place I needed to see most of all.  My bedroom.  At the entrance to the dining room, a cheap hollow door lead upstairs and I opened it to climb the matted tan steps toward the landing.  

I suddenly giggled at the memory of the Christmas night when my step-brother Tommy and I had sat on these steps and took turns burping into his brand new tape recorder.  His red mopped head bent low over the microphone while I waited with my hands covering my mouth and my barely contained mirth.   

He swallowed hard and from somewhere deep inside him a word like "baseball" would be borne on the belch.  Quickly, he hit the "stop" button and we would play it back, collapsing against each other in tears.  We kept playing them back until finally I made myself sick with laughter and too much Coke, and the game was over.

I giggled again when I reached the place where I had thrown up, but my laugher reverberated on the landing.  Sobered, I opened the door to the room I had known as Tommy's room.  Gone were the Kiss posters, the X-wing Fighter that had been suspended from the ceiling, and the Marvel comics.  The tape recorder was gone.  I turned, closing the door behind me and crossed the threshold to the room that my sister and I had shared.

As I expected, it too, was empty.  Our beds.  Our Fisher Price farm.  Our Barbie dolls, records and books.  All gone.  The walls were freshly painted, but I crossed the floor to find a minute dent in the drywall, the impact of a Weeble thrown in frustration.   On this geometrically patterned linoleum, I had made my first stand and bloodied my sister's nose in response to some injustice.  Despite the spanking I received for it, it had been worth the pride I felt because although she was only 15 months my senior, she stood a head taller.

 None of the things I'd left behind when my mother took custody of us were anywhere to be found.  The sadness threatened to overwhelm me, until I remembered the shed.   I dashed down the stairs and flew out the screen door and into the backyard where my mother was wheeling the bike my sister had gotten for her birthday two 

years previously across the grass.

The gears tick- tick- ticked as she wheeled it past me, calling back “Let’s go, Alia.”

“No.” I pleaded.

She stopped and scowled at me.  “What?”

“I…” stuttered slightly. “I need to see what else is in there.”

With furrowed eyebrows she shook her head “There’s nothing else.”

I didn’t believe her.  I didn’t …want…to believe her.  I strode purposely toward the shed in the hopes that she had missed something. Anything.  Grownup eyes missed things all the time and I needed to see for myself.    Leaning into the shed, I closed my eyes and counted to three Mississippi before opening them again.

There, against the inner wall stood Tommy’s bike.  Lacy cobwebs bridged the handle bars some sort of fuzzy cocoon had attached itself to one of the front spokes.  The tires were gray and flat and it…was…beautiful.

“Mom!” I gasped. “Mom!”

 

Her face, back lit by the afternoon sun appeared around the doorjamb.  “Yeah, I saw that.  

It’s not ours.”

I ran a finger over the torn vinyl of the once-white seat.  “I know.  It’s Tommy’s.  They put it in here when he got his ten-speed'.  I looked at the dust on my finger and pleaded with her.”Can I have it?”  

I was surprised to hear the Landlord’s voice, but he had joined my mother at the entrance to the shed.  “I tried callin’ them.  They didn’t want it.  Gave me your number so’s you could come get that one.” 

He gestured to my sister’s bike.  “Seems to me this one was meant for her.”

 

My mother rolled her eyes and looked again at the bike with chagrin.  “It’s a boy’s bike.”

“I don’t care.”

Silence stretched between the three of us as I watched the wheels of decision turn behind my mother’s hazel eyes.  I chanted the word “please” silently, as a pilgrim might silently pray for a miracle at the steps of a cathedral.

 

“Please”, the words tumbled past my lips. “I need it.”

I didn’t have the words to plead with her for this consummate reminder of a life before I realized that my father was human.  And that humans were breakable.  And that life had shattered him.

 

“I need it.” I stated again, my voice breaking.  “Please.”  The word hung in the air like the millions of dancing dust particles lit by the one shed window.

 

She sighed.  “Okay.”

At some point, the bike was taken to a shop where it was cleaned up, refitted with tires and brakes and a combination lock and plastic coated bike chain were purchased.   I rode that bike all that summer…even after one of the pedals fell off and the seat had lost all the cushion.  I realize now that I must have looked utterly ridiculous half –pedaling around the neighborhood, but I didn’t care.   

As fall came I rode it less and less, and when it was stolen during a weekend trip to my grandmother’s farm, it was no great loss to me.  It was okay.  I was okay.

Every once in a while when I have time to kill, I get off the interstate and take a right onto Veranda street.  Then a left onto Berwick.  I park at the end of the street and look out onto the ocean and remember.   The little house is gone now.  They tore it down to build a bigger house with bigger windows.  The shed too, lost in the footprint of the new house.

 

I never saw Tommy again, either, but that’s okay.  I passed on the finest skill a brother can convey - wordburping-  to my son who if I may say, does a pretty mean “broccoli”.

Never settle for "That's Not A Word."

I think the most fun part of being a word herder is that you can (and should) come up with words that suit you to fit a certain feeling or event.

Shapeish - "shay-pish" -  A word to describe the poor fit of ones clothing, in that you are made of shapes for which the clothing was not intended.

Example:  "That's a nice skirt, but I tried it on and it doesn't work.  It made me feel shapeish."

Hurlish - Suddenly nauseous in response to a certain stimuli. 

Example:  "So, I opened the refrigerator door and out fell some sort of wriggly thing.  I wanted some strawberries but the the thought of that thing having crawled on them makes me hurlish."

Tipping the Scales

This idea has been kicking around in my head since I became convinced that there are darker things afoot in this world than you or I can see.  I had originally thought it would be a dialogue of sorts, but this character had to do all the talking.  Oddly, it was in Dame Judy Dench's voice.   So, here it is.

Tipping the Scales

I’d like to be able to tell you that it was your imagination.  That’s what I’d like to say.  I could still say it but I doubt you’d believe me because if you’d believe such a thing you wouldn’t be here. You’d have already told yourself and you would not be sitting here, across the table from me, drinking your coffee and pretending that your life isn’t falling apart at the seams. 

First, let me tell you that you aren’t crazy.  You’ve experienced something that most people don’t and since it’s something you have been told can’t happen, you probably think you’ve gone around the bend and down the lane.   Well, stop.  You aren’t losing your mind, but if you listen to me you’ll gain some knowledge.  Usually, I’d get in big trouble telling you the secrets of the mystical beyond as it were but I don’t think we’ve got anything to lose. 

I’m old.   Much older than I look, actually, and it’s getting harder and harder to maintain this form, such that it is. I’ve decided that the boobs are going to droop and the hair is going to gray and the face is going to crease and that’s the way it’s going to be.   I’ve decided that the thing you’re here to talk to me about, that’s the last one for me.  There are too many of Them and not enough of Us and because there are so many of Them with their facebook and smart phones, it’s nearly impossible to create another one of Us.  It’s easy for Them, though.  So very easy.

Them.  You know, those creatures who feed on the souls of the already vulnerable.  Well, I don’t know what you call Them, but I call them the Suckers, for lack of a better word.  That’s what they do.  They suck.  They start with someone who’s already a little bit broken and they take and they take and they take until the slightest suggestion is enough to bring forth unconscionable acts.  The poor thing is so empty it creates a vacuum and when They stop sucking and push something nasty back the other way, well, it takes over the person’s whole being doesn’t it?  Like a marshmallow in the microwave it expands and fills them up until there’s nothing left but anger and insanity.  That’s a lethal combination. 

Oh, they’ve been around a long, long time.  As long as we have.  As long as humans have, perhaps even longer if the anti-social behavior in some species of animals was studied a little closer.   They’ve had different names down through history.  Demons is the most popular I think, but They’ve nothing to do with God as you humans understand things.   I’m not saying there’s not someone in charge, mind you.  There’s an agenda of sorts.   I just don’t know how the powers that be are going to address this problem of not enough of Us and too many of Them.  The scales have tipped and when the scales tip, usually the solution is a fairly drastic one.  I won’t be around for that, though.  At least I don’t think so.

That’s a fine question.  Who are we indeed?  Well, we’re not angels so you can put that idea out of your head right now.  We are without names, actually, because we can’t really be described. 

Look, when someone does something that appears to be heroic they can never explain why , can they?   Any “on the spot” news interview you’ve ever seen has someone who ran into a burning building to save a baby or pulled a puppy off of the cracking ice or chased down an old lady’s purse.   Do you know what their answer always is when they're asked why they did it? 

That’s right.  It’s “I don’t know. Something just told me to do it.” Am I right?  Well, that's Us.

You see, to create another one of Us there has to be a strong wave of belief, and that’s just not happening anymore.  Yours is an instant society.  Pictures or it didn’t happen, isn’t that what you say?  Too few humans are willing to believe a fantastic story without photos or video, and therein lies the rub. 

For one of us to be created, we can’t be seen like you can see a flower or see a bird.  Only perceived.  Out of the corner of one’s eye or a whisper in one’s ear and your world, well, it’s just too plain noisy for us to be noticed most of the time.    You all live in your own little places and your own little spaces and there’s no evening campfire or rocking chairs on a porch to talk about what was felt and noticed and let the stories come together where a pattern develops.  The common experiences are… noticed.  The internet doesn’t allow for it either, sadly.  These things must be shared face to face, not a picture with a quippy caption.   

We can’t be formed if we aren’t noticed.   “Noticed” and “seen” are different, by the way.  

When everything has settled and you’ve had a chance to think, really think, about how if things had happened any other way, it could have been so much worse.  That’s us. again.  And don't feel guilty, it’s natural and completely understandable that you, collectively I mean, not you specifically, would flee from and explosion or turn your back to not see a child hit by a car.  Your first duty to your species is to survive and it’s that part of your brain that kicks in when things go awry.

We cause some of you to run the other way. Toward the blood and the broken glass and the gun shots.  Let me tell you that those who do run toward the danger aren’t better than anyone else, and they’d tell you the same thing.  They do it, because we compel them to.  We compel some of you to stand barrier while those fools picket funerals they have no business sticking their nose in.  We compel some of you to shield a woman you don’t know from falling glass or jump onto the tracks to rescue someone who’s fallen just before a train rolls in.  That’s Us. 

How’s it done?  Another good question.  It’s different for each of us.  We work things in the way that suits us best.  For instance, I’m not one to do the whisper in your ear thing. It works well for others, but more of a nudger.  I push here and push there until they do what I want them to do.   I used to be a little more subtle, but like I said, I’m old.  Too old for subtle, anyway.   One of us, a handsome fellow actually, is the master of the subliminal.  You know, he once left a fortune cookie message for someone three days before she was meant to fall asleep on the train, get off at the next stop, and discover an abandoned baby?  He was good.

Look, what I’m telling you is that what you’re feeling is completely natural.  You noticed something the other day and you’ve got no one to tell about it.  Share your experience with others who were there.  Tell them what you saw.  Tell them that you saw a man run toward a situation that could have gotten him killed.  And then listen while they tell the story of the woman who took off her Dolce & Gabanna scarf for someone to use as a tourniquet and then offered her expensive Range Rover as a makeshift ambulance.  She could have jumped in and driven for the hills, you know.

And listen again while another tells the story of a man who told three little girls about an island of unicorns  while EMT’s worked on their unresponsive mother. 

Listen again and again until the pattern develops.  What pattern?  Ahh…here's my master plan.  Bad things happen.  We can’t do anything about that, because we’re not allowed.  That’s their territory and we can only manage what happens after.   If, and only if, you and your fellow humans can continue noticing the heroes and the small ways you found to love and care for eachother even as strangers, there will be more of us.  And more of us means that we will equal or outnumber them. We'll have tipped the scales without the "intervention", so to speak.  Are you with me?

Good.  Me?  Oh, don’t worry about me.  I’m not going to die in the classic sense of the word…I’ll age and then pass into a  different form.

No, not a ghost.  A dog.  As dogs, we can so the same sort of thing, but we have to let our tails and tongues do the talking. It's easier in a way, really.  I wish I could choose, but I have little control over what sort of dog I will be.   Frankly the best I can hope for is a shaggy mutt in the average family with 2.5 children.  I shudder to think that I’ll become one of those tiny barky things or God forbid, a poor pitbull destined for the ring.  Come to think of it, those tiny barky things all seem to think they're pitbulls anyway...

Them?  Yes, of course.  They move on, the same way we do.   No, not as dogs.  I would have thought that would have been obvious considering the shape this discussion has taken. 

Thankfully, their powers are gone, but the attitude remains.  They, my dear, become cats.