Stanley squinted his eyes at the blast of sunlight after being cooped up in the envelope during his three-day mail journey from Florida. Dazed, he gazed around and shivered as he spit out this greeting: “D-d-d-dadG-G-G-GUMMIT it’s c-c-c-c-cold here. W-w-w-w-why would J-j-j-jack send me all the way from t-t-t-the S-s-s-s-s-sunshine S-t-t-t-state to this t-t-t-t-t-tundra?”
If you’ve never seen a Flat Stanley, or heard the drill, here’s a thumbnail explanation: Stan the man is a school project in which students send paper outlines — paper dolls of Stanley, after a fashion — across the land, and sometimes around the world, to experience the contrasting aspects of varying cultures. (Eg: Jack’s Stanley learned that we make cheese in Wisconsin, compared with one of the favorite pastimes the Four Horsemen and I have about cutting cheese.)
Stanley wasn’t ALWAYS flat, as is recounted in children’s book titled, appropriately, “Flat Stanley.” Rather, the story goes, a bulletin board fell on a youngster named Stanley, who was smashed “as flat as a pancake.” Stanley survived, albeit flat. Jeff Brown’s book chronicles Stanley’s discoveries of times when being flat has its advantages.
In this case, I suppose, the advantage was being able to be stuffed into an envelope without further smashing in a postage machine. And that’s how Stanley came to us: flatter than a pancake, and shivering like an Eggo waffle right out of the freezer. After I sat Stanley by the fire, he thawed enough to speak fluent flatulence (must be the official language of Flat Stanleyland), so I told him to switch to English as his second language because it’s the only one I understand.
He did so (embarrassing to me that a piece of paper is multi-lingual, while I’m not) and laboriously lamented his plight, whining about the weather.
Well, I can see where a Florida-born Stanley’s blood might be too thin for the Badger State, but Kate and I kind of like the seasonal changes, and the bluffs around La Crosse are beautiful year-round, whether busting with blossoms in the spring, or tighe-dyed in green during the summer, or ablaze with a multicolored palette in the fall, or dusted with snow come winter.
Another reason I don’t blame the lad is that he arrived here without a stitch of clothing on, on a frosty day with snow in the forecast. Maybe there oughtta be a law against shipping nekkid Flat Stanleys in the mail.
So I needed to get the little feller some appropriate clothing. Packers. Partly to tweak Jack’s dad, Skip, a Buffalo Bills fan.
OK, OK, truth be told maybe I did make Stanley shovel first thing, but I loaned the little feller a boot.
OK, OK, maybe the shovel was a tad big for the lad.
So, it’s not like I made him weather a storm in some desolate place right out of the movie "Fargo." He was dawdling in his shoveling toward the end, making snow angels (I KNEW he’d like it once he got out there), so I hollered out the door: “Hey, Stan, done yet? Want some hot chocolate?”
And then, he embraced The North with his Fargo moment, saying, “Yah!”
As he wiped the froth from his lip and played with the swimming marshmallows, I said, “Do ya like dat hot choklit, son?”
“Oh,” he said with a grin, “YAH!”
He also warmed to the Badger State, and took a road trip south with us into the warmer climes of Illinois for the Christmas weekend. While here, he snowballed, toured Christmas displays, saw real reindeer, rode Santa’s sleigh and also rode around the house on the dogs’ backs. I tried to teach him how to do armpit farts, but alas, he can’t bend his arms.
He got quite a kick out of my ice fishin’ joke, though, when we tiptoed down the steps — lookout for the ICE on the ramp — to our dock to watch ice fishermen.
“Hey Stanley,” I said. “Do ya know how to ice fish?”
“Nope,” he said, with a look of puzzlement.
“Well, you take a can of peas (frozen peas will work, too), and saw a hole in the ice. Then you open the peas and place them around the hole.”
Leaning forward with excitement and to rebuff a gust of wind that nearly knocked him over, Flat Stanley said, “Not worms? You don’t use worms? Or minnows? And THEN what?”
“Nope, not worms, or minnows,” I replied. “Just peas. You see, when the fish comes up to take a pea, you kick him in the icehole.”
He continued to look puzzled for a moment, then caught the word play and doubled up in laughter.
And thus Flat Stanley evolved from a fainthearted Floridian into a weatherized Wisconsinite in just a few short days.
We finally sent Flat Stanley packing back to the humidity of Florida, so he could take his place on a bulletin board not unlike the one that smashed him in the first place.
But we’re betting that that the little guy will be cheering the Packers in the Super Bowl. Speaking of Packers, Santa Kate gave me a SWELL Christmas gift: my own share in Packers stock. And thus, I’ve joined the sparse ranks of NFL team owners.
Although I’m sure Aaron Rodgers and his teammates will make me a proud shareholder all the way to the Super Bowl, consider this fair warning, from a shareholder: If you falter, Flat Stanley is on the sidelines, waiting to waive you goodbye.
P.S.: The whole experience gave me an idea. We'd like Jack to visit, too, instead of just his Flat Stanley, but airline tickets are sooooooooooo expensive that that's prohibitive. Maybe Melissa and Skip would just fold up their second born and stick him in an envelope. Then we could host Flat Jack. If it worked out, we could entertain his brothers as well: Flat Vincent, Flat Luke, and Flat Patrick.
What do you think, Flat Jack? Are you game, if your folks make sure nobody folds, staples or mutilates the envelope? Gimme a YAH, and a YAY!
