Sue's little boy had been shadowing me. He had a bag of fresh buttered popcorn. Like Hansel, he'd been leaving a trail. He'd heard my voice for years--my recordings are what brought me here--and so carried a bemused and delighted expression on his face, as if to say: So this is Odds Bodkin. It's a great honor to be a part of families' lives, to tell stories in their cars, and at bedtime, even if only as a disembodied voice floating from the stereo. I told myself that for this little boy, the live show would be even better. One mom told me once that I was like the uncle in the family, the one who shows up and tells stories.
Five weeks previously, we'd gotten a call from Sue. She'd seen from the web site that I was performing at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, and although she'd never put on a public event, had gone for it, here in Boca Raton. Emails had gone out. The homeschoolers network had been activated. Word of mouth had commenced. Mil had reduced our fee. Now here we were. There would be a crowd.
"You must be the crazy Bodkins," she said as we'd pulled into the flower bestrewn parking lot. She'd been working with Mil for weeks. They hugged each other. I got a hug.
"We've got all your recordings," Sue went on.
"That's a good thing," I replied. I like it when families have all my recordings. I still hadn't decided what stories to perform that morning. As we'd driven in, I'd asked Mil,
"What should I do here?"
"Why don't you wait and see what stories she'd like to hear?"
Good answer. I had my two 12-strings, Svetlana my Gibson SG, my alto recorder and my kalimba--enough instrumentation to be able to perform 90% of my works.
Besides, for a master storyteller, it is a point of pride, at least for me, to be able to tell just about any of my stories on request, so I asked her and some of the other nice young moms what they'd like to hear.
"Uwungelema," said Sue without hesitation. "We love that one."
She was referring to The Tale of the Name of the Tree, a Bantu story that's a favorite among the younger set.
"Consider it done," I replied.
"And The Little Shepherd," she added. "Can you do that?"
"Sure."
"Wow. Great."
It didn't hurt that these were stories I perform all the time.
And so most of my hour-long performance was sketched. To finish a show, I have a few options, but the two best show-stoppers I've got are The Electric Three Little Pigs and Finn MacCoul and the Big Man. Since I was tired of playing Svetlana, I left her in the rent-a-car and decided upon Finn. I haven't recorded it yet. It's hilarious. Nobody in Boca Raton would have heard it.
Other children floated into the hall and checked me out. Their parents grabbed them, smiled at me, and hauled them back out the doors, thinking, I guess, that they'd distract me. But they don't distract me. I'm on a low carb diet and the popcorn was making me salivate, but other than that, I wasn't distracted. I enjoy meeting my three foot tall fans.
And the six foot tall ones, too. Kids are beautiful. Heck, parents are beautiful. At least the ones who come to my shows. This was the thirty-fifth, and last, day of non-stop straight traveling and performing. I'd seen so many kids, I felt like Ponce de Leon. A few more wouldn't hurt.
Besides, helping them become good imaginers is my life's work. Sue's little boy was becoming very comfortable, distributing popcorn on the stage now. I leaned down and confided in him that it was probably a good idea to pick it all up before the audience came in. Mil also had told him that he was now stage manager and it was his job to keep all children off the stage and guard the guitars. He beamed, picked up the popcorn, and cast a proprietary eye across all the empty chairs. Then he realized he was on the stage, and stepped off. Intelligent little fellow.
It was time to disappear so I went and changed. By now children and families were swarming the anteroom outside the hall. I realized as I walked to the bathroom that I was whistling some melody or other. Two little girls stared up at me as I entered the men's room.
"Odds Bodkin whistles when he goes to the bathroom!" they began to announce in loud voices outside the door.
I laughed to myself. I do tend to whistle or hum before shows. Revving up the musical engines. I'd never heard it put quite that way. Gotta be careful where you whistle.
After the performance, during the autographing session at the sales tables, Susan whose arts organization helped with the show and sponsored the workshop brought Emma to the table. Emma, who looked about nine or so, is shy, I learned afterwards. And it had been a big deal for her to come over and talk to me and deliver the gift she'd made me. A big deal because someone had sat on her origami crane, and it was now flat as a dollar bill.
I already had a pile of valentines with children's writing saying Happy Birthday Odds Bodkin on the table. Now, Emma had given me an origami crane.
I picked it up and examined it for a moment. She looked at me. I know that in a child's mind, what to an adult like me is a little thing can be monumental in importance. So I studied it a moment and turned to her.
"Wow," I said. "You know, when I was a little boy, I could never ever make one of these."
"My mom helped me," she offered.
"Still, even with my mom, I could never make one of these.
May I keep it?"
She nodded.
"Thanks, Emma. This is very beautiful."
Which it was, and so was she, and so was her mom, and so was everybody there.
I'm the luckiest man in the world.
