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THE BLUE POOTLE – OCTOBER 2006
On Butterfly Tantrums
The Blue Pootle wonders why things explode.
I’m reminded of Monty Python, and the mother who is told by her politician son that things explode every day, and not to get sentimental about it. Well, I’m not sentimental so much as bemused. What causes these great uprushes and overflows? What makes things fizz? Why must the volcano spew lava and the cork fly from the champagne? Not that I drink champagne regularly, or indeed, come across lava-spewing volcanoes on a day to day basis, but when I’m draining the dregs of my morning coffee and looking with distaste at my unwashed purple turd of a dressing gown (and thinking, gosh, if I’ll admit that this is an unappealing item of clothing, imagine what poor Hubby must feel about it) quite often I find myself ruminating on the nature of explosions. Why doesn’t Hubby explode and tell me to get out of my maroon monstrosity of a dressing gown and make an effort? Apart from the fact that he’d like to keep his head connected to his body, obviously.
In the nature of getting to the bottom of this mystery, I’ve compiled a list of things that do explode, and a list of things that don’t:
Things That Don’t Explode
Things That Explode:
You may be looking askance at the final entry on the ‘Things That Explode’ List, so I’ll elucidate.
I trained as a ballet dancer. I was quite a good ballet dancer, but my feet didn’t look attractive in the pointy shoes. So I gave up the tutu and took up the pen, if you see what I mean, but before that happened I often took part in ballet dancing shows, and they usually involved teeny little children who had been dressed up to look cute, in an Anne Geddes puke-makingly awful kind of way (forgive the bias, but I was once traumatised by a card adorned with a picture of a baby dressed as a bud and held by Celine Dion dressed as a flower – to this day I have no idea why). For one of these shows (I think I was about sixteen years old) my dance teacher decided we should re-enact The Great Flood - note the biblical capitals - and so she found some random guy with a beard to pretend to be Noah and we all were decked out accordingly as animals.
I was a cat. I was a slinky cat, in a black sparkly catsuit with a long tail and a pair of fluffy ears. I apologise for the detail, but I’m aware that this is the slow part of the column and I wanted to at least ensure the interest of the older male demographic of my readership. Right, well, I was a very sexy cat and the youngest members of the troupe were all butterflies. It’s fair to say that both mathematics and theology were not the strong points of my dance teacher.
The butterflies looked lovely with their flappy wings and their pipe-cleaner antennae. They tiptoed on to the stage, cued in by the ancient piano player and her mad old husband who had a line in messy drumming. They stood in a line and prepared to sing their ‘We Are The Butterflies Flap Flap Flap’ song. The parents oohed. The fathers momentarily forgot the allure of my catsuit and concentrated on their paternal emotions instead. All was going swimmingly.
Until the punch-up started.
I think it started small-key, with a few murmured comments, nothing really nasty. But boy, did the bad feeling on that stage escalate. Soon we were subjected to a vicious display of wing-pulling and antennae tweaking, while a general chorus of ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ echoed around the stage. It took the dance teacher and four sets of parents to break it up.
That fight exploded out of nowhere.
So what I’m saying is that emotions explode too. Feelings run high, and then, if the circumstances are right, they force out your metaphorical cork and spray randomly around the room, in all directions, leaving ringing eardrums and, if you’re unlucky, a wet patch on the carpet.
So why, to return to the original point, doesn’t Hubby boil over because of my purple dressing gown? Perhaps because it doesn’t trigger his deep emotions. He must love me even though I refuse to get up with the baby at 6.00am and demand a cinnamon bagel before one of my delicate ex-dancing feet will emerge from the duvet to hit the perfectly dry carpet. The purple dressing gown is, in the major scheme of our lives together, unimportant. What a revelation.
That’s really good news for me: one less thing to put through the washing machine. And possibly I should start asking for honey on my bagel.
Word of the Day: Nubivagant. Moving through or among clouds.
Go here to provide the Pootle with feedback, start a discussion about the burning issues addressed above, talk about her new novel, Three Things About Me, or simply to say hi.
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