Words and Thoughts: Store Brand Cool Whip
Hello again, alleged readers! Do you think the squirrels that operate the lights inside of a traffic light do it for the money? Or is it more of a “love of the game” type thing? I fondly recall the countless hours spent sitting with my uncle, watching the traffic light on the corner by my aunt and uncle’s house. My uncle always had such wisdom, and worldly knowledge, to impart. Not the least of which was how traffic lights worked: Highly trained squirrels go up and down the inside of the apparatus with a lightbulb, screwing it into one color, then unscrewing it, and screwing it into the next color, over and over again. I’m told the newer ones have three bulbs, and the squirrel just flips a switch; but the purists swear that the first method really preserves the art of it all. I mean, I guess everyone knows that’s how traffic lights work, but young Stav was naive and ignorant.
I used to make bets with my uncle about which color the squirrel would light up next. I lost just about every bet. Later in life I would come to understand that he was just exploiting my complete and total lack of pattern recognition to help finance his side business repairing cracked plastic yard flamingos; and my aunt’s strict insistence on having only name brand whipped topping. Industrial quantities of pink paint, super glue, and Cool Whip really start to add up quickly.
He loved fixing those flamingos though; and my aunt did love Cool Whip a whole lot. Looking back, I’m glad I was able to help. Real shame that one time the power went out, and in the dark my aunt mistook a can of flamingo paint for a tub of Cool Whip. She got about halfway through the can before she realized something was off. At first, she accused my uncle of buying store brand whipped topping, and that was a whole big thing. But then they got the flashlights out, and that was really a whole big thing then.
I’ll never forget the majestic image of my aunt in the front yard, silhouetted in the moonlight, projectile vomiting flamingo paint, as the strobe lights of the ambulance parked in front of the house cast forth staccato flashes of alternating red and blue across the whole neighborhood.
My uncle sold two refurbished flamingos to the poison control guy over the phone that night.
My aunt never forgave my uncle for storing the paint in the fridge next to the Cool Whip. Two years after the incident, my aunt put four live flamingos in the shed where my uncle kept the plastic flamingos he was repairing, and made brine-shrimp scampi for dinner. After dinner, my uncle, wreaking of shrimp, went out to the shed to get a few hours of work in, and unsuspectingly opened the shed door.
The flamingos were on him at once.
I’ll never forget the majestic image of my uncle in the backyard, softly backlit by the setting sun, frantically whipping around half of a plastic flamingo to try and scare the real flamingos away, as the birds danced around him wildly, honking belligerently at him like flamingos that hadn’t eaten in a day, because they hadn’t eaten in about a day.
My aunt gave the animal control officer two tubs of Cool Whip that evening.
