Weddingbee Blog

Part I
Part II 

During one of his visits, Mr. Petunia let me borrow his copy of Tim Burton’s Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories. It’s a rather dark but whimsical book about kids who don’t fit it, about oddities and strangeness. I did not know this for quite some time because the book sat in my office forever unread along with the other loaned item from Mr. Petunia: a DVD of a Nightmare Before Christmas.

Mr. Petunia’s visits continued for some time. He would ask me about the book and the movie, but truthfully, I had not made the time to read or see them. After a while, Mr. Petunia stopped coming.

I think about six months to a year or so passed without my seeing him.

One day, at the beginning of the summer of 2005, almost two years after that semester we’d first met, I took the book and movie home. I had not thought or expected much of the book, to be honest, but each story was delicious. A bit creepy, yes, but delicious. Like the story of Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love: “Stick Boy liked Match Girl,/he liked her a lot,/He liked her cute figure,/he thought she was hot,/But could a flame ever burn/for a match and a stick?/It did quite literally;/he burned up pretty quick.”

Then I saw the movie, and oh my goodness. I couldn’t get over it. I mean, Jack doesn’t realize that it isn’t Santa Claus and thinks it’s “Sandy Claws”? It was so amazingly bizarre and childlike and WONDERFUL and I just don’t know what came over me. I just could not stop thinking this about Mr. Petunia: he GETS ME. Of all the things he could have brought me, he brought me these things because he knew I would LOVE them. He gets me. From all those conversations we had shared: he gets me.

When you teach, students don’t even realize you are a real person, to be honest. But Mr. Petunia had taken the time to get to really know me and he had figured out, somehow, that I was one crazy silly girl.

I knew then I had to find him. I was not sure how I was going to do that by the way. Well, I knew that at some point he had worked at Starbucks — but which one? I had a friend who worked at a Starbucks and thought maybe they would have a directory, but they didn’t. I had his mother’s business card because she worked in real estate and I had mentioned once that I was interested in perhaps buying a property, but I was hesitant to call (what would I say?); his school records were literally at my fingertips, I suppose, but no way was I going to risk looking them up for this reason.

All I could do was talk to my friends and see if we could devise some way to find him that wouldn’t make me come across like a stalker or a desperate old hag!

This is the last cliffhanger — I promise! The next installment will be the last in the How the Petunias Met storyline!