the question is: to fix or not to fix?

Some things should be fixed. Some should not. But which are these?

Dee knocked a gourd keychain holder and mail pouch from the back hall door a while ago, and it broke. She was crest-fallen; she knew how much work went into growing it and then the later fashioning of the finished product.

I said, "Don't worry, I can fix that." And then the dust commenced gathering when I didn't follow through.

Today is a good day to put some glue on the cleanly-broken piece. A single piece, with interlocking edges with the whole. The glue will hold, the break will almost be invisible.

But the larger object above, the Froggy the Gremlin squeeze toy, is another matter. Another casualty of Denise's, her childhood toy that first belonged to her dad when he was a tadpole (now BIG John) - that takes a little reflection. Dee played and played with it, and finally the leg ("just") came off. With the passage of time, the leg is gone, long since discarded or lost. A discard is hard to accept, given the place Froggy held. Toys were not as plentiful as they are now, and they sure aren't rubber!

Froggy was and is a real rubber toy, not plastic. And rubber, like us, dries, withers, eventually crumbles and falls off. So much for rubber and human flesh. Froggy always kept his broad smile, even when Dee's dad, then Dee or her siblings, yanked and tugged at his limbs.
And now, in 2008, look at him! He still smiles. I find something kind of flesh and blood about that.
I study the even-now always shape-recovering squeeze toy, how he can still be squoze, and I think about making him a wooden leg. Does not this venerable frog of rubber deserve one? I could and would do that. A toy who's gone through what he has?

I get no answer from him, of course. It may be that at night when he's in his room all alone, that seemingly transfixed smile relaxes. Maybe his true feelings, if any, show in his darkened solitude, except for the other old dolls of Denise's, sharing the shelf with Froggy. Their posed mutual hugs may all change at night. A lot could be going on up there.

I keep coming back to the fact that Froggy has - for all outward appearances - never complained, and has held his severed leg like a badge of honor, but for the (other) fact that the leg is missing and not holdable.

Such are the musings of your author today.

Maybe the question of what to do should be put to the sewer raccoons, and if they don't know, they could ask the blind, wise, really OLD coon king who lives in his own darkness beneath the old post office downtown.