Juniperperper

Every once in a while, especially around Christmastime, I think about a funny little elf named Juniperperper. The thought of him brings back memories of one childhood Christmas when the Daily New-Record published a serial story about him during the weeks leading up to Christmas. My memory is foggy, but I guess Mom probably read the story to Danny and me each day. Even though I have forgotten the details of the story, I remember Juniperperper fondly to this day.

This year, as you can probably guess, I found Juniperperper on the internet! He happened to pop into my mind while I was sitting at my desk, and of course, I Googled him. There's not much to find, but with a little work, I was able to piece together The Elf Who Couldn't Do Anything Right, by Bob Boyle, in its entirety.

If you would like to read Juniperperper's story, you can find it piece-by-piece in the following links. Most of the links will take you directly to the article, but for a few you will need to navigate to the story yourself.

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8 - Navigate to page 7 (newspaper page 13).
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11 - Navigate to page 17 (newspaper page 33).
• Chapter 12

Thank you, Bob Boyle, for this story. Thank you, newspapers, for publishing it. Thank you, Mom, for reading it to us kids. And thank you to whoever put all those old newspapers on the internet. I enjoyed reading Juniperperper's story, as well as bumping into other childhood memories in the process: Roses, Ralph Sampson, Ronald Reagan, and the 1984 Redskins (who won their division the year this story was published). Merry Christmas, y'all!

A Cat in a Bustier and Clown Pants

I was cleaning my office last night, and I found a bunch of stuff from high school and college. There were plenty of commonplace things, like class notes and papers, but it was the unexpected stuff that really brought back memories: a list of Highland Retreat quotes,¹ my sophomore- and junior-year track meet schedules with all my events and times,² poetry written by me³ and by others,⁴ a draft of the top ten reasons to be a math major,⁵ a game of MASH,⁶ and numerous doodles and drawings.

Several of the drawings were the kind you make by folding a paper into thirds and getting different people to draw the head, torso, and bottom of a person. Andrea and I used to sit in the back of Calculus class and goof off. Here's one of our masterpieces:

¹My favorite is when Jeremy yelled, "Don't get me in trouble! Don't get me in trouble!" while spraying LaVonne with a hose in the pool house.
²My best time in the 1600M? 5:54.
³Mostly silly.
⁴Mostly serious.
⁵Including such gems as "Life without Geometry would be pointless."
⁶The MASH-ee ends up getting married in an orange dress to a guy named Fred, driving a station wagon, and living in a shack in Australia with 15 kids and a pet rat.