Hopping Down the Bunny Trail

Today, the shelver at work who was planning to put in an appearance as Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit during Saturday Storyhour discovered that his head was too big to fit inside the rabbit head. The shelver whose head was small enough didn't think the gig sounded like fun. So someone filled in for me at the cash registers, and I became Peter Rabbit for a little while. Asthmatic, claustrophobic me. I was inside the head (with the conveniently broken fan) for under fifteen minutes, but I was breathing like Darth Vader before it was over.

I wouldn't have missed the experience, though. It was fun to have tiny little kids hug me and proudly show me the pictures of me they'd just colored, or stare at me in awe from a safe distance. One little girl was so afraid, she screamed when her mom carried her too close to me. Another girl couldn't be taken in: she took one look at me and said, "You're acting. Rabbits aren't that big." I crouched down to make myself shorter, and she got the joke. She was proud of herself for being clever enough to figure me out, but I was a little sad for her. One of the things I miss most about childhood is believing in things that can't be real. I grew up to be a skeptic, a pragmatist. But sometimes I wish one of my favorite storybook characters would come to life and give out free hugs.