This Is Klarf
Do you guys want to meet Klarf? He’s very important to me. I found Klarf in a dirty gutter in Sunset Park, Brooklyn when I was about four years old. He was my rose growing from concrete! (apologies, Tupac), and I took him home and washed him off in hot, soapy water. And then he was mine.
I wouldn’t say that I was a weird kid, really — I was, like, inventive and shit, but even as a youngster I was too self-aware and borderline sardonic to be one of those little dipshits buzzing around in an old man’s vest, casting spells with glittery macaroni wands. I could never have been the youngest child on a TV sitcom, is what I mean. But I sure did like to give my toys strange names. A plastic baby doll I got when I was three I called Rayavonne (she was white plastic; not sure if that’s better or worse), my great-aunt was incensed when I named a doll she gave me Flowie, I had a purple bear dubbed Yuri, and then there was Klarf. Sweet, gentle Klarf.
Of those valiantly-named toys, only Klarf remains. I moved across the country with him in my clutches, and he sat on my desk all through college (remind me to tell you about the time Klarf took a final for me — what a hoot!). For so many years, it was just me and Klarf against the world. We had good times and we had bad times, but the important thing was that they were together times.
I found out many years later that Klarf belongs to the species Madball, apparently quite a popular toy amongst the boys-who-burn-ants-with-magnifying-glasses set — which explains why, when I look at the other examples of Klarf’s kind, I see only smallness and evil in those horrific round faces. I see nothing of the the misunderstood bravery that fills my heroic pig-nosed Klarf. My bewitching Klarf. My lovely little prince and my dear friend.
You do think he’s lovely, don’t you? Don’t you think he’s lovely? Really, you must think he’s lovely.
