big head

During my last year living in Cambridge, a friend’s daughter Jenna did a project at school that involved a life-size cut-out of Steve Buscemi’s head on a stick. I’ve no idea what the school project was about, but when the first semester was over and the extended holiday break began, she brought Steve with her.

Not surprisingly, it was she who decided it would be appropriate to make Steve part of the friend family … an extra, if you will. Given Jenna’s compassionate nature, I can easily see her understandable soft spot for actors who’ve been cut up and pasted onto cardboard.

So there was a scene that happened about twelve times a day. Someone was busy doing three things at once … running after pets, talking on the telephone, and making a cup of coffee, for instance … and then suddenly s/he turns, and Steve is staring at him/her.

So s/he jumps and screams and is startled. And everyone else laughs.

“What’s Steve Buscemi doing in the cupboard? Get him out of there!”

And then that person was relegated to finding an appropriate hiding place to scare the crap out of the next person.

Our friend Bernice, whom we all tried unsuccessfully to startle, would never take the bait. She’d chide us by saying, “Do you really think that Steve would be in our cupboard or the refrigerator or in the shower?”

She was right, of course. There was no logical reason why we should scream when we’d see Steve Buscemi staring at us from the bathroom mirror or the edge of the bookcase or from inside the fireplace.

There was no reason, but it still happened. A lot.

My point to this post was going to be something about an article I’d read regarding politics and education. About how, when it comes right down to it, playing with cut-outs of Steve Buscemi’s head is far more valuable than learning how to take standardized tests. Because playing with Steve teaches important lessons about reality, which clearly cannot be learned by filling in little bubbles with a number two pencil. And about how doing well on standardized tests is a useless skill that becomes obsolete as soon as you leave school; I mean, it’s not even a fun party skill. Fun party skills involve such things as knowing how to light a match from a matchbook with only one hand, and I’m pretty sure that’s not on the new standardized test.

But I lost the thread of argument before it even started when I opened a package and saw Steve Buscemi’s head bubble-wrapped inside the box.

Yup … Steve struck again, compliments of Jenna. An attached note revealed that she came across him in a box tucked safely in her attic while she was packing up her eldest daughter for college. How lucky am I to have friends considerate enough to send a big head across state lines?

Nice move, J.

So I’ll end this with gratitude for the educational value of friends. Thank goodness I’ve people to teach me things. As Bernice once so patiently explained, Steve Buscemi won’t fit into the refrigerator.