Kelly Jr.

It's funny, the memories that stick with you and suddenly appear out of nowhere.

I'd recently bought myself a car. Truck. I'm old school, to me it's a truck - not an SUV, and definitely not a car. But whatever, it's a Chevy Blazer, 2001, 4door. Big ol' V6, which in this age where you need a credit check to buy gas may seem weird, but I need something with the horses to climb those mountain passes I always find myself on.

So I was driving my mom and baby sister upstate for a family funeral, and I have this little skeleton - about 2-3 inches long - hanging on my dashboard. I found it at this street fair I'd stumbled across in the east village a few weeks ago, at this stand selling Mexican trinkets. It's a metal skeleton, with a rainbow feathery thing on top of his head, with spring/coil legs and arms. All pasty white, with black trim. I thought it would go great on my dash, and there it hangs.

My sister saw it, and decided to poke at it and make fun of it. Now, I hadn't named the skelly yet but right then I answered, "Hey - leave Kelly Jr. alone!"

It was odd, because I hadn't thought about Kelly (Sr.) for years. Decades. See, back when I was a kid, my grandfather had this old station wagon. A couple of them, really, it was the only car he'd drive; this was in the pre-mini van days. Anyway, he worked in this toy distribution warehouse - cheap stuff, really, the kind you find at Rite Aid, Duane Reade, and discount stores. They also sold these rubber skeletons.

They were like, 10-12 inches long, oddly colored, and made of rubber. He had one that was a neon green, and it glowed in the dark at night. He hung this from his rear view mirror, dangling there for all of us kids to laugh and play with.

Incidently, this is probably why I'm as twisted as I am. But I digress.

Anyway, this skeleton - often replaced, because it was a hard life for a rubber skeleton in a family as large as our extended one - was named Kelly. Kelly, the real Kelly, was a friend of my grandfather's who was Randy Johnson-esque in stature - tall as a redwood and thin as a sapling. We'd joked, once, that the skeleton looked like Kelly - and the name stuck. I couldn't imagine riding in that station wagon without Kelly dangling from the mirror.

Now that was some 25 years ago, easily. My grandfather hasn't driven since I was in my early 20s, and he hasn't had a new Kelly since my mid teens.

So it surprised me, pleasantly, to suddenly think of it now.

Anyway. Kelly's made of good strong die-cast metal, so hopefully I won't have to worry about replacing him for years to come. Seeing him there is like looking at a child of a friend who's long left this world, and being reminded of an earlier place and time when that friend was right there beside you, laughing and joking.

It's a nice memory, isn't it?