This first ran here on Sunday, August 9, 2015. I meant to repost it a few weeks ago when "Uncle Jimmy" Weldon passed but I forgot. Since today has been so busy I need a rerun, here it is now…
As you read this story, please keep in mind that I was nine years old at the time.
When I was that age, I would sometimes go down the street to play with a girl named Julie. I liked Julie the way a boy of nine can like a girl of eight, which is altogether different from the way he might like her, say, four or five years later. Julie was fun and Julie liked me and the only problem really was that she had way too much energy. You got the feeling that every morning, she'd start her day with a nice, healthy bowl of Sugar Frosted Sugar.
If she'd had her way, all we would have done all afternoon was run around. She wanted to run into her backyard and play on the swing set and then she wanted to run out to the front yard and roll on the front lawn and then she wanted to run back into the backyard and play some more on the swing set and then she wanted to run out to the front yard and climb the big tree out there and then she wanted to run back into the backyard for a little more swing set and then run out front to play hopscotch on the front sidewalk and then run back to the swing set…
I had energy at that age too but not like that. She also didn't want to go inside to play board games (which I liked) or to watch cartoons on TV (which I really liked). She always wanted to run around outside. Fortunately, one day I got the power to stop her from doing this.
That afternoon as we were running from the swing set to the front lawn or maybe from the front lawn to the swing set, I suddenly heard Julie scream in terror. It was the kind of scream that makes you think someone has just been murdered. "What is it?" I asked her with huge worry.
"It's…THAT," she shrieked, pointing at the hideous, deadly monster that was looming above us.
It was a dragonfly. In case you've never seen one, they look like this…
She ran from it like her life depended on it and I ran with her because…well, because she was running, I guess. We sprinted to the back of her house where there was a little hiding place behind the garage. She crawled into it and cringed in a fetal position, trembling. After a few minutes of that, she pleaded with me, "Peek out and see if it's gone."
I peeked out and it was gone. "What," I asked, "is so scary about a dragonfly?"
Julie looked at me like I was mad, truly mad. "Don't you know about dragonflies? They sew your mouth shut and you die!" This is apparently an old urban legend even in rural areas — one of those things some people believe based on no evidence whatsoever. I had never heard it before but someone had told it to Julie, thereby inducing nightmares as well as daylight terrors.
I asked, "How does a dragonfly sew your mouth shut? Do they carry needles and thread?"
She answered, "They do it. I don't know how they do it but they do it. They sew your mouth shut and then you can't breathe and you die!"
I asked, "Can't you just breathe through your nose?"
She answered, "Okay, then you starve to death. You can't eat if your mouth has been sewn shut!"
Being way too logical about something this silly, I replied, "You can go a few hours without eating. Couldn't they unsew your mouth before you starved? I once saw my mother take the stitching out of a sweater and it took like three minutes."
By now, Julie was angry with me. "Look! Would you like to have your mouth sewed shut? Even if it didn't kill you, it would probably hurt a whole lot."
I had to admit she had a point. Unless, of course, dragonflies use Novocaine.
Since the evil monster had flown off to go sew someone else's mouth shut, Julie cautiously left the hiding spot and play resumed. But she kept glancing about, ever vigilant for dragonflies of any size or hue. From that moment on, I owned that young woman.
At 4:00, I wanted to go into the house and watch a favorite program — The Webster Webfoot Show on Channel 13. On it, "Uncle" Jimmy Weldon and his duck puppet hosted some of my favorite cartoons. Julie, however, wanted to stay outside and run back and forth between the front lawn and the swing set…and all I had to do was to point at nothing and yell, "Dragonfly!" Julie would scream and we'd run into the house, make sure all the windows were locked and then, while we were in there waiting for the mortal danger to pass, watch cartoons.
After three or four, she was restless and wanted to go outside and run back and forth between the swing set and the front lawn some more. "Go look and see if the dragonfly is still around," she told me. I headed for the window but as I did, I saw on the TV screen the beginning of a Screwy Squirrel cartoon so I told her, "There are dozens of dragonflies flying about outside. They're in squadron formation!"
Julie screamed, ran into her room and hid under the bed while I watched Screwy Squirrel.
This went on for a few weeks, as I recall. I could make Julie do just about anything I wanted by merely pointing to imaginary dragonflies. One day though, I pushed it too far.
I was collecting baseball cards then so I had a lot of gum around the house. I never liked the gum as much as the cards. In fact, the gum was so horrible that given the choice, I'd have preferred to chew the cards. But the gum was light pink and not that far from the color of lips so that gave me an idea.
We were in Julie's house one day playing a board game I wanted to play, hiding from dragonflies I'd "seen" outside. After I won the game, I told her I would go outside and check for dragonflies. She thought I was so brave…maybe the last time any female believed that.
I went outside, chewed up a wad of the gum, smeared it over my mouth, then staggered back inside in a panic, making grunts like I couldn't talk. Julie screamed, "A dragonfly sewed your mouth up!" I nodded in silent agony. Horrified — and before I could stop her — she ran to her mother's room.
All the time I was there playing, her mother was in a little private study doing…well, I'm not sure what. Reading, maybe. She'd check on us every hour or so but mostly, she left us alone. Julie pounded on her mother's closed door and when Mom opened it, Julie cried in desperation, "You've got to do something! A dragonfly sewed Mark's mouth closed!"
I, of course, walked up chewing the gum and saying, "What's going on?" Julie's mother knew exactly what had happened.
"Did Grandma tell you that silly story about dragonflies?" she asked Julie. Julie said, "No, it was Grandpa! He said dragonflies sew your mouth shut and then you can't breathe and you die!" Her mother told her that was a silly superstition, scolded her for believing such nonsense and said, "I'm going to give your father's father a call and give him a piece of my mind." Then she admonished me for scaring Julie so. I said I was sorry and would never do it again.
Julie and I went outside to play and, sure enough, a dragonfly buzzed right past us. She flinched but didn't run and then we talked a little about how people believe things that aren't true. I said, "The problem is that there are things you have to watch out for that are dangerous and when you're watching out for the wrong things, the real dangerous things can get you."
"Real dangerous?" she asked. "Like what?" I told her that a fully-grown crow could pick up a 100-lb. child — like, say, either of us — and fly us off into the sky and we'd never be seen again. She was skeptical but I half-convinced her when I said, "Didn't you see the news last night? It happened to a kid who lived in Culver City!"
Julie looked around and saw several crows sitting on a nearby phone wire. I said, ominously, "Those look pretty well-grown to me!" Taking no chances, Julie insisted we run back into the house and close all the windows.
I know it sounds mean but I had a good reason. It was almost 4:00 and there was a good chance Uncle Jimmy would be running another Screwy Squirrel cartoon.