Losing Yoda
A friend of my husband, G. Grod, is moving soon. He offered his collection of vintage Star Wars toys to our boys, 5yo Guppy and 7yo Drake. (And 39yo G.) We, of course, accepted this stunningly generous offer with alacrity. The boys have been playing with them for the last few weeks in great delight.
A few weeks ago, in the shadow of some writing deadline, I yelled at the rambunctious boys to go play outside.
“Sure,” responded Drake, instead of his usual begging for television. “We’ll take the Star Wars toys outside.”
No alarm bells went off in my head; I was awash in relief. The boys went to the back steps. I left them playing happily there until it came time to leave for Guppy’s tumbling class. Drake was especially excited to go, as I was going to let him play with the gameboy.
I went out the back door and found the boys in the back yard, not on the back steps.
“Time to go!” I said.
“We lost the toys,” they said.
I looked around our backyard, covered with high grass and higher weeds. I stifled the urge to scream.
“Get down from there and start looking.” I said. “We’re not going to tumbling unless you find them.”
We found eight with relative ease. Walking slowly we (and by this, I mean mostly me) found four more. Only two remained at large, a snow trooper and Yoda.
The time for tumbling class had come and gone. Guppy took it in stride. His older brother, deprived of a planned-for video session, had a meltdown, which I ignored. My husband arrived home from work. I put him in charge of the search party and left for a movie. When I returned home, G said they’d found the snow trooper in the rhubarb. I had figured the snow trooper was going to be easier to spot than Master Yoda, who is green, dressed in brown, and small.
Sure enough, Yoda eluded our efforts to find him. The next day we looked, and I said a prayer to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. Do you know it? It goes like this:
Tony, Tony, look around
Yoda’s lost and must be found.
Please help us find Yoda.
(Insert lost item instead of Yoda; you get the idea.) But we did not find Yoda. I looked. The kids looked. G looked. Days passed.
Then came a very windy day. The latch on our back storm door was broken, so the wind kept blowing it open and slamming it shut. I heard glass break, looked out our back door, but didn’t see anything broken. I thought the storm door panels were made of plexiglass. But one had been glass, as I found out when G. next used the back door and found the glass on our back steps and in the nearby flower bed.
When I went out the next day to pick up the glass, I cherished a small hope of finding Yoda. I’d be working in the area Guppy said he’d last been seen. I looked from above; no Yoda. I bent at the waist; no Yoda. Only when I crouched down, picking up the smallest pieces, did I finally see him. Master Yoda, lying face up, patiently waiting to be found.
Here’s the close up of where he was. Looks obvious, right?
But what about medium distance? Is he still easy to find?
And now, what about from regular height? Can you find him now? (Hint, he’s a little right of center.)
We rinsed him off and returned him to his carrying case. Then I said thank you to St. Anthony, though I thought breaking our storm window was a little extreme, and decreed that from that day forth, the Star Wars toys were INDOOR toys.
June 7th, 2011 at 5:03 pm
I know what Yoda would say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x51EIXjhiEU&feature=related
June 16th, 2011 at 9:12 am
This made me laugh out loud. I’m glad Yoda didn’t just fade into nothingness under his cloak like in the movie.
June 16th, 2011 at 9:53 pm
Hooray for St. Antony!