I don’t miss many things from my old life, with The Ex. But I was short on space and time when deciding what to take and what to leave, and I’ve since regretted a few things left behind. Like the lego Stargate that The Hair made one Christmas*. And Steven and Murray. No, Steven and Murray are not yet more superfluous children, accidentally forgotten like Keven McCallister. Steven was my bald mannequin head**, and Murray my posable life size skeleton.

Steven came to me via a friend, who bought him cheap at some weird sidewalk sale, because her daughter was interested in makeup, and she thought a mannequin head would be good for said daughter to practice on. Said daughter was creeped out, however, and my friend quickly came to the realization that NO ONE in her family was quite weird enough to fully appreciate Steven, and in fact she knew only one person who was. So she rescued him from the depths of the closet where he had been shoved in horror, and gifted him to me for my 40th birthday.

We knew his name was Steven, because it was written on his neck. Steven clearly had a past, and needed love. I suppose if you want to get technical Steven could have been his owner’s name, but frankly that’s not the kind of controlling patriarchal world I want to live in***. So his name was Steven, and I bought him a rainbow Afro wig and a collection of holiday hats.

Then one night, The Hair and I were up very late, watching Angel. Specifically the episode where Angel has to save a pretty young thing who’s being stalked by a neurosurgeon. A neurosurgeon who practices “psychic surgery” and can detach and reattach parts of his body at will, the better to stalk her with (and if there is anyone reading this who thought for a second that I was talking about the heart-warming family drama Touched by an Angel, instead of the Buffy spin-off about a crime fighting vampire with a soul, back away from this blog slowly. This is not the blog for you. You will not enjoy it. Go bedazzle something). Anyway, Angel’s PLAN to defeat Mr Floating Eyeball involves chopping him in pieces and boxing them separately so they can’t reattach (good plan!). In the end though, he merely knocks off his head (weak). The Hair and I were uncertain this was sufficient and had this exact conversation:

Hair: Put it in a jar!

Me: Yeah, like on Futurama.

Hair: Maybe we should put Steven in a jar.

Me: You know, I think we have one big enough too …..

Hair: I can’t believe we didn’t think of this before.

And that is why Steven was in a huge glass jar on the kitchen counter the next morning, when The Ex came down to go to work, and was not amused. The memory of his startled cry of panic warms me to this day.****

>sigh<. I miss Steven. And his BFF, Murray, who I am just too depressed to think about right now. I’m gonna go sniff sadly in my Chardonnay; maybe text The Hair, nostalgically, and write about Murray another day.

Murray and Steven, circa 2013:

(Ok. Maybe they ARE my superfluous children…….)

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*He left it on the table and added more accessories to it every morning like a wonderful sci-fi advent calendar, until finally on Christmas morning I came downstairs and there was a little lego Santa on his sleigh, flying through the Stargate. Have I mentioned recently how much I love The Hair?

**I was reminded of Steven recently when The Bloggess mentioned in a post that she once tried to rescue a decapitated head. I say if you get to a certain age and don’t have a least one story featuring some kind of disembodied head, what have you been doing with your time?

***You might say we already live in that world, and you might have a point. Which is all the more reason to make a whole alternative world, with alcoholic unicorns and skeletons in fancy dress and yes, disembodied rainbow-wigged mannequin heads who are empowered enough to somehow write their OWN name on their neck.

****I might be kind of a bitch.