Re: Laf & The Rat -- Lafcadio T. Lion and Strawberry Sage and Friends Fun Forum

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Date Posted: 13:10:17 01/12/04 Mon
Author: Sage
Author Host/IP: qam1b-sif-9.monroeaccess.net / 12.27.214.10
Subject: Re: Laf & The Rat
In reply to: swamprat 's message, "Laf & The Rat" on 06:42:21 01/07/04 Wed

I can't help but think there's a book to be written in here somewhere. Some of you read Journal and some only come here, so I thought I'd copy and paste here what I wrote this morning. We are all special in our fairly normal ways, but Laf was different. He knew it. He, at the same time, lamented the fact and played on the fact. Real life with the Lion was twice as full of highs and lows, lafs and tears, as Internet life with him.

Monday, January 12, 2004 ~
Noon. This cannot turn into a trend. I just got up. Fed Ayo and swept the Wildman's red clay mess off the kitchen floor and got the beer cans off the coffee table, including the half full crushed one. Never wise, either, to leave a ziploc full of bbq chicken on a table overnight when you live with a cat. He came last night to meet a guy who'd agreed to buy something off me - something the Wildman would do federal time for if he was caught carrying it in his truck. The guy didn't show up. The Wildman picked up Laf's copy of "Lafcadio T. Lion, the Lion Who Shot Back" and started to read. I pushed "record" on the tape player, not realizing the thing wasn't plugged in. He was such a fantastic reader, that I could only envy his kids, although I'm sure their bedtime stories were never peppered in quite the same way. But he choked in the middle. The reality of Laf's death hit him and hit him very hard and he sobbed. Then he went for the CC he'd brought last week, chasing every glass of whiskey with a can of beer. He paced back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, gripping a can in each hand. I cried my own tears, some for the Lion, some for the Wildman, some for me and life in general, and a few for the coffee table he was banging the beer cans on as he wailed over his best friend's death. He picked up the book and tried to read some more and gave up to talk to me about the real table dancer he'd fallen for a few years ago. He fiddled with the stereo and couldn't get the radio or the CD player to work, so I turned on the old metal radio in the kitchen so he could listen to his blues. He went out to his truck and came back in with his harmonica and stomped red clay all over the kitchen floor as he accompanied the tunes blasting from the radio. Before he left somewhere around 2 a.m., he hugged me and said it had been one of the most fantastic nights he'd ever had. That's what the lion did to people. He brought out intense emotions, not always a good thing when it was anger or tears, but no one could bring out the natural highs like he did.

I sat in the back of the little church yesterday morning. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I listened to words and music meant to inspire. That's what the lion's gift and greatest desire was, you know, to inspire - to reach the innermost places in your soul and make you feel those places.

Hope, you had the right number. I asked my son to replace Laf's message on the answering machine. I didn't want to. I would have liked to leave the Lion's voice on the recorder. After my father died, there were days when I'd call his house just to hear his voice on his voice mail. But the Lion's message was somewhere around two minutes long in English and in Spanish. He'd been going to change it himself. Just another thing he never got around to doing.

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