The Beast That Ate Daddy

To the Panther picnic we go. I leave Tabitha and the kids outside the faculty kitchen and go inside. There, waiting for me on a table, lies the panther suit I have agree to wear in exchange for volunteer hours at my daughter’s school. I zip myself inside the animal hide and fit the huge paws over my sneakers. The giant black head I plop over my own. I stumble blindly for the bathroom mirror.

Truly the outfit is startling: If you didn’t know I was The Panther, you wouldn’t think I was The Panther. I’m more an enormous-headed black bear, but the effect is nonetheless impressive. I lumber back toward the door and open it. I see little, just streams of light through panther fangs, but I can hear, muffled, Dixie’s first, terrified shriek: “No! No! No! No!”

Tilting my head, I can just make out, between my fangs, my children: Tallulah sprinting away into the schoolyard and Dixie shrieking, struggling to break free of her stroller straps. I realize: Daddy just walked into this room, closed the door and reemerged as this ... beast.

They think the beast ate Daddy. They suspect, strongly it appears, that they are dessert. I might allay their terror with a word, but I’m not permitted to speak, and the truth is I don’t really want to. I am now, even to my own children, transformed. I am The Panther.

I stumble down the stairs into the crowd. I still see nothing, but I can hear the cries of awe and admiration.

The tendency to confuse oneself with an actual celebrity is one of the occupational hazards of the mascot. I know this from the time I spent on a book about the Oakland A’s. The A’s mascot is an elephant named Stomper. The A’s, always slow to part with a nickel, sought a mascot on the cheap. Looking for the guy to wear the elephant suit, they grabbed someone off the street who was just happy to have the job. The man had no particular gift to be a mascot -- his butt cheeks had a habit of poking up out of his elephant suit -- but small children adored him. Well, it didn’t take long before it went to Stomper’s head. Strange people began to turn up at the VIP entrance to the Oakland Coliseum and announce to the security guard “we’re with Stomper.”

Soon many tiny hands are grabbing at my fur; every small child wants a hug, and every parent has a smile for me. But then I round a bend, feel a yank on my tail and hear a different kind of voice. Squeaky, loud, abrasive: the voice of a 12-year-old boy. No -- many 12-year-old boys.

“Hey, Panther!” one screams, “Are you a boy panther or a girl panther?” Another shouts: “Let’s find out!” I make a run for it.

To our seventh wedding anniversary celebration. The first thing we think of when we think of treating ourselves is removing ourselves from our children’s presence. We drive 40 miles to a secluded forest, both thinking: 40 miles should about do the trick. We take a bracing walk through the evening fog and then head to dinner at a swanky and romantic “hunting lodge.” The stuffed heads of slaughtered deer glare down at well-to-do Northern Californians who disapprove of hunting.

The food is good, the wine is better and life, at that moment, again seems to be moving in the right direction. Talk moves from this to that, and we are soon thinking of everything that is right in our lives.

Tabitha says she has discovered the perfect wedding present for a poet friend of ours who has just become engaged: an exquisite, coffee-table edition of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” It’s perfect because our poet friend admires “Leaves of Grass.” It’s perfect, also, because the book sits, as it has for some years, in what has come to be known as the “Re-gifting Closet.”

The Re-gifting Closet is stuffed to the bursting point with all the unwanted presents we and our children have been given: 10-pound chunks of petrified wood, half a dozen Disney princess outfits and, apparently, one very fine coffee-table edition of “Leaves of Grass.”

In disposing of these items, my wife shows amazing ingenuity. Not only must she match the gift to the recipient, she must ensure that the recipient has no known connection to the person who gave us the gift in the first place. (As our poet friend is a recluse, and lives halfway across the country, he is an ideal end user of the Re-Gifts.)

It’s really a very thoughtful exercise, when you think about it. It requires us -- or at any rate, her -- to remember who gave us what far longer than is necessary when we actually keep the gift for ourselves. My wife beams: She’s clearly pleased with her tidy solution to a vexing problem. “Plus it’s absolutely beautiful,” she adds.

I grunt: I can barely remember the book. I’m pleased mainly with the space that will be made in the closet. What with Christmas around the corner, we’ll be needing every inch.

“So who gave that thing to us anyway?” I ask.

Her glow is gone. She’s staring at me with an expression I’ve come to recognize as: Anyone But You and I Wouldn’t Believe It.

“I gave it to you,” she says.

“Oh,” I say. “Right.”

“As an anniversary present.”