Brobee is Missing! (Day 2 of 365journal)

Here we are on day two. I assume if you are reading this then there is some interest in the goings on of this little house near the prairie so I will continue on with my diatribe.

My second installment was not hard to find or even difficult to write in story. At first glance of the picture, one would think how cute, some baby toys perched on a sofa. “One is that little blue dog from Nickelodeon and the other is some robot creature just the right size for a tot to have some fun.” Thinking this way one would be sadly mistaken. Underneath this shy repose is a more sinister and diabolical story: A story of deranged jealousy or maybe even of the slave trade. I am positive if Bill Curtis were to investigate the tale he would undoubtedly be led down roads that traverse the seedy side of the cartoon world. The course of the investigation possibly infringing upon the sordid realms of pleasure vices and other despicable behaviors may reflect control by more powerful or maybe just bitter former characters of the cult of personality.

Digressing in this hypothesis, I detract from my original goal: tell the reader a story about my picture from day two.

Yesterday was full of work and toil and the day went busily well as one initiative fell after another. After arriving home, I prepared dinner and enjoyed it with the family hastily as we had other efforts to wield on the day before it slid away into history. We had yet another Craig’s List rendezvous which led to the sale of our Wii system garnering a much needed sum of monetary profit, and after that a trip to Target to pick up a few things needed at home as well as a few items of flagrant enjoyment such as adding to my Pez dispenser collection. After all the Halloween selection is neat this year as they glow in the dark. Not to mention they are cheap and easily stored as to not take up so much room much like another hobby I wanted to pursue at an earlier date of building a train set. I could just imagine the enjoyment of building hills and patterns on a huge table in the garage, maybe even reflecting some real locations from my home state of Tennessee to be forever memorialized in plastic, felt, glue and faux wood. However once complete, other than running the train, the item just takes up a huge amount of space and that space is forever lost for storage or other use. Store the system and then to use it at ones whim results in an all day chore of set up and tear down which detracts from the fun and suddenly becomes work. From this the reader can deduce that I tend to over think things a little and probably miss out on a lot of fun.

Back to the story at hand: viewing the picture Blue stands happily beside Plex the robot on the sofa. Our trip to Target yielded the robot as we saw it as an addition to the collection my daughter may unofficially be starting of Yo Gabba Gabba toys. She already has Brobee, “The little green one!”, as the tune professes at the start of the show, but wait, why isn’t Brobee in the picture?

I searched the bottom floor of the house and couldn’t find him for the photo shoot. All through the house I wandered calling “Brobee!” in a low whisper all the while complaining under my breath about how stars have their issues and prima-donna complexes that develop with notoriety. Before my search was over I was confident that Brobee was jealous of Plex since he sings most of the songs and has his own instructional segment of the show teaching processes and procedures for such great acts of growing up as “It’s fun to wash your hair.” and “This is how you brush your teeth.” I mean who can top that anyway? There aren’t many unless one takes a trip back through the annals of children’s television and pulls out Barney or Howdy Doody or maybe even Bozo the clown but still, one is hard pressed to find an instructional segment of this nature on a program that is not deemed educational or in the category of Sesame Street or the Electric Company: so I can see why a star of Brobee’s caliber and mental strength would be upset with the addition of a new toy in the house after being a fixture since the last Christmas. Understandingly, it is a slap in the face to give a person such control, reign and authority and then suddenly expect them to share it.

But after I take the picture and think a little longer about the situation, I begin to fear for Brobee. Thoughts race through my head about Brobee being hurt or even killed through accident or maybe something more sinister like Blue and Plex deciding the house is not large enough for three characters. Add to that Plex is a robot and is the smartest of the three. We have stories all through history where this kind of intelligence goes awry and fights back due to its superiority complex.

All through the night, well at least until I fell asleep on the couch watching X-Files, I tried to find him. Even as I lay on the couch, one has to rest a little when leading such an exhaustive search effort, I could hear his little Brobee voice echoing through the house, “Sometimes I like to move around and be loud, loud, loud!”

Maybe he will show up today. Through the course of Keira playing with different toys and digging through her toy box maybe he will resurface and we will finally know the truth. Maybe he will be able to tell his own story and rekindle the fire of prominence and fame through reinventing himself as the star who survived. Or maybe Brobee will be silent forever and this will stay an enigma and be filed away with our other stories of similar nature like the case of the missing Godfather Saga, or possibly the case of the missing Galaxy Quest DVD. I can envision our story being a conspiracy case reviewed and discussed for the decades along side the Kennedy assassinations or D.B. Cooper.

So whether we find him slumbering in the toy box, shredded with his stuffing ripped out behind the washer or see him doing stage renditions of "Rent" or "Wicked" in a road show slave trade, Brobee will be missed.

And if he doesn’t turn up, we’ll go buy another one.