A New Year's Epiphany

We went over to Ace's house last night to watch a movie and when we were leaving Ace said, "Wait! I have a Christmas present for you in the car!" And Dr. Theresa said, "Is it a toad?" Ace was stunned, baffled and astonished! His jaw dropped, the way you've heard about people's jaws dropping but you never believed it. Ace was amazed by Dr. Theresa's secret powers! But really Dr. Theresa was sarcastically recalling something Ace had completely forgotten: the time he gave me a hideous misshapen toad dressed as Elvis Presley for my birthday. With a strange admixture of sheepishness and pride he produced last night's gift, not a toad, though Dr. Theresa was close: a plastic frog sitting on a pink toilet, reading a book. "When the sun shines on him, he bobs his head," Ace explained. Now, I knew what Ace was talking about because Megan Abbott has a figurine in her apartment that bobs its head when the sun shines on it through the miracle of solar power, but it is a dignified little man who is not sitting on a toilet, you would not catch Megan Abbott with such a shameful possession. This morning I picked up the toilet frog and was going to say to Dr. Theresa, "So I guess this goes in my office," but Dr. Theresa interjected with a forceful and serious "Yep!" - a yep of grave finality - long before I could finish the sentence. And thus was the frog banished. He now forms a kind of bookend on the opposite side of my printer from the horrific Elvis toad. During my recent achingly dull "posts" about deciding what to read next, I was going to tell you that I've always wanted to finish reading THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLE by John Cheever, which I was halfway through and very much enjoying when - not doing anything gross, just standing there juggling everything I was going to take on the plane - I accidentally dropped my paperback of THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLE in an airport toilet in 1993. And maybe I took it as a sign, because I have never gone back to that book. I dropped Sartre's autobiography in the same toilet at the same time! I decided not to tell you that because I thought maybe I "blog" about toilets too much. But last night as Ace handed me the gift, I had an important revelation: I will never stop "blogging" about toilets. That's the Pendarvis guarantee! Happy new year, toilet lovers. Together we can make 2014 the Year of the Toilet. (See also. And also.)