Men and Other Reptiles

“We had a yard sale,” my mother told me on the phone last week.
“Don’t be sellin’ my stuff!” I replied.

I get attached to stuff, even stuff I haven’t physically seen for years. When I was in elementary school, I had this pair of black winter boots that I wore for years. My family teased me about them, and said they looked like Cossack boots, and tried to get me to wear other, newer boots. I refused. I liked the boots. I loved the boots. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just let me alone about them.

I sure would like to have boots like that again.

My family has no heirlooms. We get rid of everything. My great-grandmother’s player piano and all the rolls for it, the carnival glass, the Fiestaware - all gone. Practically nothing remains to be handed down from generation to generation. I have my grandfather’s goldstone cuff links and a few books, including an old copy of “Black Beauty” that a teacher inscribed as a gift to my great-grandfather in 1909. If I didn’t have it, it probably would have been in the yard sale stack.

“We found something of yours in with your sister’s books,” mom continued.
“Don’t sell my stuff!” I hyperventilated.
“I’m sending it to you.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Something one your friends gave you,” she said. “You’ll see.”

I scritched my head over that. Something a friend gave me? Surely it wasn’t the red wax bust of Lenin, with a candle wick in the center of his bald head, that N. brought back from Russia for me. I’m pretty sure that’s one thing I did throw away. I’m pretty sure I’m still peeved that everyone else got cool Red Army flasks and slender Egyptian perfume bottles, and I got a Lenin candle. (“You’re not girly enough for the perfume bottles,” she said. “And I thought this looked more like you.” Bite my ass, N. Even after all these years, bite a little communist star into it.)

The package from mom arrived yesterday. I tore open the padded envelope and there was “Men and Other Reptiles,” a small volume of quips and quotes that “runs the gamut from subtle teasing to bitingly on-target barbs.” There's lots of Mae West, Dorothy Parker, and Zsa Zsa Gabor: “I want a man who’s kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?” sort of stuff. There are a few more amusing entries: “Show me a young man who actively embraces Republicanism and I’ll show you the world’s most boring date.”

But my favorite part is on the end leaf, an inscription to me (mammal) from D.