It started innocently enough. My sons wanted to know what it was like when I was growing up. (Obviously, this was for a school assignment and not out of sudden interest in their mother’s backstory.) I began by telling them about my friend, Lauri, who lived across the street. She had all the coolest toys… including a family of Weebles. You could do anything to Weebles, I explained – drop them from the tree house (upside-down!), balance them on the back of Lauri’s uber-patient German shepherd, throw them at her little brother (don’t worry, we had terrible aim) – and when they landed, they would always bounce right back up. Amazing, right?!? The boys seemed puzzled, so I reflexively launched into the 1970s earworm: “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” Crickets.
My older son finally broke the stunned silence. “So, all they did was ‘NOT fall down?’” Neither of them could fathom a world in which this was “fun.” And in that moment, I realized I may as well have been Laura Ingalls tossing an inflated pig bladder like a balloon with Pa. I was from another era.
They wanted to know about other toys from “the olden days,” but I’d learned my lesson. I didn’t dare mention how exciting it was to bake a cake with a light bulb or describe the thrill of carefully pulling smushed Silly Putty off the newspaper to reveal a transferred image of Ziggy. (Mostly, I feared they’d ask me what a “newspaper” was.) My sons didn’t understand why I seemed bothered. “Obviously, you’d have old-fashioned toys,” they reasoned. “You’re from the 1900s!” Rather than responding, I segued into a discussion of “connotation.”
Perhaps Weebles weren’t the most exciting toy ever. But something that manages never to fall down, no matter what comes at it? That’s not a bad metaphor for approaching life. And as we get older, “not falling down” is a good literal aspiration as well!
-Sheila
Sheila Lawrence is an Emmy and Golden Globe winning writer/producer whose TV credits include “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Gilmore Girls,” “Ugly Betty,” and “Desperate Housewives.” She’s an MEA alum (shout out to the Elders on the Rocks cohort!) and is over the moon about attending Anne Lamott’s MEA workshop in Santa Fe this November.