A Piggy Runs Through It

Picture day- I dreaded it as a student; I dread it more as teacher. I imagine students crowded around crisp yearbooks, carefully inking out my front teeth, scribbling devil horns on my carefully styled hair, the glossy page squeaking beneath the crude sharpie as it adds some adult acne to my airbrushed face. Soon, my new found gappy smile would find its way to some social media site I never heard of-- Snapchat was just about over by the time I caught wind, so I'm sure some brave new website hosts the same old online antics. Ignorance is bliss.

Besides the imminent defacement, sitting for the snapshot steals time better spent plowing through a pile of papers or researching a new angle on an old canon. But teaching is lousy with such trivialities. Standing over my cluttered desk, punching staples into a stack of vocabulary packets is one of those inconveniences-- this mindless moment brought to you by Sharp Copiers- Sharp, it will do half the job half of the time. This serendipitous occasion, though, prompted an unexpected epiphany- I have a very visible problem.

"Is purple your favorite color or something?" A student wandered into my classroom early for our 8th period English class. What a random question. Where did she get that idea? I stopped guessing as my curious eyes moved from the translucent purple stapler in my right hand to the stack of papers next to my cell phone, encased in purple, and finally rested on my very purple blouse.  How about that?

"You know what, Jodi? It just may be... I never realized it, but now it's hard to ignore." She twisted her grin and nodded at my filing cabinet, my keys dangling from a purple key ring-- below them sat my purple work bag and from my bag poked my purple polkadot umbrella. She suspected shenanigans- a big purple denial. In the fleeting seconds between this awakening and the first bell, I did a mental inventory of my purple possessions.

Kindle cover, purple; living room walls, purple; throw pillows, purple; my dog's squeaky toy, purple; the comically large pen I boosted from my dentist's office, purple. How could I never have seen this? How far back does it go? My guess, my profound purple addiction is rooted in childhood...when in doubt, dig through childhood. Then it hit me... damn you, Miss Piggy.

One of my first and absolute favorite childhood toys was a Miss Piggy puppet. She wore a strapless, sateen evening gown with long formal purple gloves and violet shadow coated her bulbous blue eyes. Whenever I worked my purple Piggy puppet, I would flail her arms and mimic her signature, "hiya!" I'm sure my mother never regretted mall hopping at the peak of holiday shopping madness to find my plastic playmate. Never once could she have possibly longed to launch the menace from our second story window while I batted her calves, "Hiiiiyah! Hiyah! Hiyah!"

Piggy was practically family! My sister even claimed possession of her when I was too old and cool for this now vintage doll.Piggy even made it to the family photo album the day my then three year old sister giggled, "Mommy!" as she swung the doll by its hair. In 1988, bold shadow with a thick liner was a smash on magazine covers. Combine my mom's makeup with my her then frosted wavy hair and in my sister's baby brain, voila- Piggy = mommy. We took a family photo using Piggy as a stand in for Mom. Poor Mom- no matter how beautiful, no woman wants to be compared to a pig. No good deed goes unpunished.Luckily Mom has a good sense of humor.

She has a sharp wit and isn't afraid to get silly. While other kids were learning campfire songs, we were singing, "It was a one eyed, one horned, flyin' purple people eater..." Another source of the purple problem surfaces! All in all, I suppose my love of all things purple is akin to my affection for my childhood memories. Somewhere in my subconscious I was inspired to plant beautifully subtle reminders of happy days gone by in my daily adult life.

The bell rings and brings me back to Jodi and the rest of my kids. They begrudging plop last night's writing assignment, sure to be peppered with purple prose, on my desk as they shuffle to their seats. Looks like I've built myself a sort of purple paradise.