You know there’s more pie, right?

I’m so glad you’re here, but … pie. I don’t want to distract you. Priorities and all.

If you do have a minute, I’d love to tell you a little story. It’s not very long, but right after you really should go back to that pie idea.

The “Give-a-Show Projector” : basically a D-cell battery flashlight with a plastic lens on it so that you could project filmstrips on the wall in the dark…the very dark (‘cause it wasn’t that great a flashlight).

The Kenner company sold tons of these from 1958 on - and like the 3D marvel toy “ViewMaster”, “Give-a-Show” brought images from tv shows and movies right into your house… no sound of course, but in a pre-video time you could experience the same still-frame cinematic thrill as audiences of the 1880’s.

Anyway, I got one for maybe my seventh birthday (I love it and I still have it) ; it was given to me at my only birthday party where grade-school classmates actually came over to our apartment. And our neighborhood.

Let me set this up: my mom wanted me to go to the best school possible so I wouldn’t become one of those urchins with a pageboy cap and a toothpick in the corner of his mouth calling everybody a “wise guy”.

So three weeks before my very first school year started, my pediatrician suggested Mom check out the school his daughter was in. Mom loved it, took me for an interview (I was three and a half - I’m sure I was scintillating), then she super-quickly secured a new teaching position that allowed her to drop me off in the mornings, and I was given some third hand light blue shirts and navy pants. Boom: we became proud members of a new community.

It was only the second year this school had allowed boys to attend, as it had traditionally been a Catholic girls school (which perfectly tracks with my alignment with all things “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”). Also, in a spirit of the peace and love 1960s, economically challenged students who normally wouldn’t be able to consider this school an option were welcomed at a discount. As well as we browner children.

Thus this birthday party was a fascinating array of the socio-economic dynamics of 1973 Kansas City, ranging from, well…us to my friend who lived in a mansion. Maybe it wasn’t a mansion… how big are mansions? It was like the house Steve Martin has in “Father of the Bride”. Like that. We had been there once for a PTA function - his bedroom was as big as half our apartment and he had the GI Joe with the tower that has a zip line so Joe could slide from the top of it down to his Jeep™. I mean, dude.

That same kid came to my party, in a town car with a driver. This was absolutely not congruous with my neighborhood’s esthetic, which was in no way destitute, but I don’t think anybody would leave a limo on the street overnight.

Anyway, this young man was OVERJOYED by my Give-a-Show Projector. When his mom (and their driver) came to pick him up, he took her all around MY little room, showing her my yo-yos and posters and harmonica and comic books. Before they left, his mom asked my mom where she found all these unique things.

“Oh! Uh… well, they were down at K-Mart.”

“Kay - Mart.” she wrote it down on a little pad with a tiny pen. “Really! Now where is that?”

“Well, they have several of them. One’s out on Metcalf Avenue.”

She put the tiny pen back in it’s leather loop. “Well, thank you. Such interesting toys. Wonderful.”

After everybody left, I asked my mother about it because I was confused as to why a kid with everything would be at all interested in what we had. I knew that they didn’t sell fancy toys at our stores, but it never occurred to me that they didn’t sell our little toys at the more expensive places.

“When it comes down to it, it’s just how much you appreciate what you’ve got.” Mom said. “You could have more than us, or fancier things, but if you really don’t love them they don’t feel special. But we have this –”

and here her arm stretched out in sweeping display, like Vanna White,

“and we are very grateful for it. So it feels to us like we have all we need.”

We ate more birthday cake, giggling at the idea of a limousine pulling up to a discount store.

And that kid with the mansion grew up to use his wealth and influence to help others and to make the city better. Good job, kid. Anyway, that story is kind of why I never have just one thing I’m thankful for on Thanksgiving, I’m always kind of thankful for everything. The sun and the rain and, I guess the appleseed… and you, reading this. I really appreciate that.

Thank you for your time. Have a wonderful day.

[now… pie!]

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