Orange-Eyed Crocodile

I was not sure what to write tonight. I am on call, and I have been about the most stressed that I have ever been. I guess most of it is secondary to fear of the unknown (moving to a new place, doing well on my board exam, etc.). I never did like the unknown because it is something that I have no control over. I fucking like to be in control!

One of the things of which I was most scared was this ceramic creature that my mom had when I was small. She was an art major in college, and one of her friends was into making ceramic/clay sculptures of reptilian creatures. The particular reptile that my mom had was about 4 feet long, had a gray body, a brown head with an eye on each side that would project out to the side roughly an inch, and a wedge-shaped mouth. My grandmother and I would often play games inserting crayons into its mouth, pretending that we were feeding it. I don't know if she came up with the game or I did (I hope that I did, because this was long before she was starting to become senile).

Anyhow, my mom liked to read books to me at night when I was a little kid. There were several fearsome creatures in these books. One that I recall was an alphabet Dr. Seuss Book which went from A-Z, all the while naming a different creature for each letter. At the end (Z) was this long, chessboard (red and white) patterned creature with a rather long snout and a dozen or so long teeth protruding from it. The creature was called a "Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuz" and it was horribly terrifying. I would get scared every time we would get to the end of the book. Now it just kind of reminds me of a thinner version of one of my aunts (well maybe a little cuter than that). Another thing that scared me was a crocodile from a book that may or may not have had orange eyes. I think it may have been from the "Saggy Baggy Elephant" when the crocodile grasped his nose and stretched it into a trunk. Or I could just be making the whole thing up. I don't know at this point, as it has been a long time. A third object that scared me was this white ceramic dish that my mom had. The cover of the dish had what I still think is a white fox with orange eyes on it. I somehow translated this into the mythical "big white cat". I had told my younger brother and sister that the "big white cat" only came out at night and that it lived in the air conditioner vent at my grandmother's house in Houston. A fourth feared creature was the so-called "scotter-fox". (Don't ask me how I manged to name these creatures; there could be a new final fantasy with all of them.) As most adults know, foxes are not really that scary. In fact, I don't think of a fox as all that much bigger than a large cat; however, the "scotter-fox" was a fire engine red color, about 5-6 feet long, and had a snout that was about a foot long with numerous, razor-sharp teeth. We had some plastic barrels that had one inside of the other until the very last small red barrel. The only way to kill the "scotter-fox" was to throw the big yellow barrel and hope that all of the barrels inside opened up until the small red barrel came out, which was a bomb. The bomb would explode and kill the "scotter-fox"--dead.

Getting back to the ceramic crocodile. It had another name.....this was its evil name. It was called "The Delit" (Dell-Itt) I had a dream (or maybe it was not a dream) that I was at Granny (Nazel's) house with Mom at night. I went to open Granny's living room door, and I could have sworn that The Delit was in the corner of the room. It started coming toward me. Its eyes were glowing orange, and its mouth was opening and closing--impossible--I had to have been hallucinating. So, I ran toward Mom screaming and crying. She and Granny were trying to figure out what was wrong. I think that I was so scared that I could not talk. I don't know if they ever figured out what was going on.

As we grew a little older, we were less scared of The Delit. The Delit finally found a place outside of our house in one of my mom's flower beds. I distinctly recall "the day The Delit died". We were outside under the back oak tree playing ping pong. My brother, Jesse, called my mom an "old hag" for some reason. She did not like this and began to chase him around and back into the house. Jesse then picked up The Delit and let it fall to the ground. The Delit was broken.

Fuck.....I want another Delit! It's a memory from childhood. My mom ran into her friend that made The Delit. I don't know if he still makes them; all that I know is that his name is Alex. After I make some money, I think that I will offer him a large sum of money to make a special Delit for me.

I guess sometimes things you fear the most turn out to be your friends, or the at least turn out to not be as bad as you thought they were going to be. Well....maybe 1/100 times they may be as bad as you thought, but most of the time, everything is all right.

Ok, so now I need Gigi to make a game with monsters called: The Delit, The Scotter-Fox, The Big White Cat, and the Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz. I'm pretty sure that they can all kill you.