July 1, 2020: Update: Theo in 3D! -

Remember my SMART reading-partner kid friend Theo? I saw him in real life yesterday, for the first time in four years.

Being in better touch with Theo is one of my pandemic Gifts in the Garbage. Theo and I had kept up a sporadic correspondence after he graduated from SMART in third grade. But when the pandemic came along, his mom said we could talk on the phone. I’m guessing he was bored, and she was sure by now that I’m a safe adult. 

Since that first phone call, we’ve been in touch every few weeks, and then just recently, I realized that I have been biking the Springwater Corridor, which comes within a mile of his house, so I asked if we could maybe wave at each other from afar. Yesterday we stood umpteen feet apart and talked about nothing in particular, movies I will likely never watch, websites he will likely never visit.  Like most odd couples, Theo and I have little in common, but enjoy each other immensely.

Best moment: Theo was trying to explain who Chris Pratt was (since I don’t watch the movies he favors), and I said I knew CP, and had seen him in a truly terrible rom-com recently. 

Theo (hoping we might both know the movie in question) : Were there spaceships in it? 

Me: Not even one.

It was grand to see him. And he says the dyslexia is much improved, which I already knew because sometimes we text rather than talk on the phone, and his texting is pretty swift and fluent. So that’s cool.

Anyway, on the way there, I noodled through a neighborhood I had never explored before, and came upon the Portland Puppet Museum.  I’m not posting pix of Theo (nor using his real name). The kid deserves his privacy. But here are some very artsy and evocative* shots through the windows of the closed (for the pandemic) museum. The woman in blue is the Snow Queen, artist not cited. 

The chicken is Darlene, and she, the dragon, and the purple-eyed puppet, are all by Mary Nagler.

*Evocative is a family joke, useful for all art criticism.