The Old Stuff
 
 

Have you ever gone through some of your old stuff from before, and suddenly realized how so many pieces of your soul have been lost to time?

Pass me a peanut, fan, and I'll tell you about My Friend, Andy.  I never told you?  No, I didn't think so.  Well, if you knew him, he'd be your friend, too.  He was everybody's friend.  Here, pull up a log and sit with me.

I tell you, My Friend, Andy is never very far from my mind, and especially not tonight, because I've been going through some of the old stuff...heh, old stuff for me, but not for him.  That's because he didn't have the chance to get old, you see...

And I'll tell you this much--what he gave to us fans in the peanut gallery never got old either, no, not once...always fresh goods for his pals, Andy wouldn't have it any other way.

Yes, fan, he was a great friend to have, he knew the best games. He taught us to play "Tag, you're it" and "Hide and Go Seek".  He was the one who taught me "I'm King Of The Mountain".

Now, there is no one to be "It", no seeker when I hide.  No King for our mountain.

Oh, I suppose there are always seekers, and kings, of course, but not like My Friend, Andy.  Not ever.

Here, watch some of this old stuff with me.  Mighty Mouse, remember that bit?  No?  Oh, here's an even older one, The Cow Goes Moo.  I forgot how he was there for all the younger kids, raising us all, teaching us about farm animals and life.  "And that's the way it goes".  Heh.

See his eyes?  You can't miss them, can you? These eyes don't look AT you, they look INTO you.  Watch, don't his eyes look so shining, so dynamic, so full of life?  You ever see more beautiful eyes than this?

No, these are not the eyes of a "sick" man, anyone can see that.  You, fan, you can see that, no?

...oh please, these could not be, these must not be the eyes of a...dying man? No, not...a dying man, please not that...

And he'd not even become a man yet, really, just a boy in big kid's clothes...our friend...

Yeah, we were afraid to say the word, like that would somehow make it real, like that would make him die for sure and then it WOULD be our fault for sure.

I knew it was my fault that I could do nothing to help him.  We all knew it was our fault.  We were all helpless and guilty.

But not My Friend, Andy, no, not for a minute.  He didn't complain. People thought he was very brave, but I think he just knew.  Dying was nothing special to him, everybody does it...

Did I tell you he worked as a busboy to keep his head level?  Yeah, even when he was a big shot, he never lost touch with his past.  He wasn't too good for us, he never thought he was too good to play with anybody, even the real young kids who had no friends.

You'd never think, since so many of us love him now, but there was a time when he felt like he didn't have a friend in the world.  He understood the ranks of the misfits and outcasts...

Anyway, to him, dying was kind of the same deal as the busboy job, just a part of being like everyone, just life.  We're all gonna do it, and he's no different, so why complain?

I hope I will be able to face death with such calm, at the end of the day.

Not that Andy wanted to leave us, you must understand...he loved us so much that when he died, he wouldn't even close his eyes.  He thought it might hurt us even more if he did...

Me, personally, I kind of felt bad that he couldn't even die, without trying to spare us pain, without thinking of us.  But that's just "the kind of guy he was", selfless to the end.

I'll poke the fire, and you refill our glasses, and I'll tell you about after his death.  You wouldn't think there'd be much to say, would you, about AFTER somebody's death, eh?  "He was my friend, he died bravely and sanely, end of story."

Not exactly--that's where his final gift to me and the rest of the peanuts comes in.  He kind of left it to us, unwritten, in his will.
That just shows you how much he loved all us kids, even the kids he never got to know, like you.

See, the thing is that Andy's whole life was the "set up".  Everyone was laughing so hard at the set up, the Foreign Man before he turns into Elvis, that no one dreamed there would be more.

But wait, wait, wait until I tell you "the punch".  It's even better. It's the most loving thing that he could have ever done for us peanuts.

Here it is:

The death routine, that was "the punch".

Oh, I can see it on your face.  You think you know already what I'm about to say.  You think I'm going to tell you how the death was really a hoax, and now he's hiding out, maybe on an island somewhere, right? Gonna make a big return sometime soon?

No, fan, but stick with me, because I'm going to tell you about "the punch", and I mean the Real Punch, the one which he willed to me, and to you, to all us kids.

"The punch", his gift to us, was doubt.  It sounds like a small thing, but it was a lifetime in the building.  And he built it for us, because he was our friend.  And he thought it might spare us pain.

Ah, the doubt.  In the old days, Andy would play games with the peanut gallery, and make us doubt.  Is he the villain?  Is he the hero?  Is he for real?  We loved when he would make us wonder.

Oh, we knew, of course, but it was so much fun to pretend that we didn't!

"The punch" was only in his mind then, just a seed.  We thought he was only playing in fun, our mind was on the moment.  Well, he was playing, but was also aware that everyone has a start and an end.  His mind, his beautiful complicated mind, was working on the legacy, even while he played with us.

The legacy of doubt.  "The punch".  You see?

You don't get it, eh?  Well, I didn't either, at first.  In the beginning, I was mad at him for dying.  I was mad at myself for letting him die.  I was mad at the world for taking him away.

I think we all were.

Ya see, fan, the "set up" was so funny that we thought that was all there was in the world.  With most people, you know, that IS all there is. They live, they die, that's all.  No one but the peanuts was even looking for "the punch", because with most people, there isn't one.

So, the whole time we are mad and sad about losing the "set up", "the punch" is sneaking up on us from behind.  There we are, thinking, is he dead, isn't he dead, is it a prank, I hope it's a prank, I think it's a prank, yeah, it's a prank.  Our pal fooled us into thinking he died, what a funny prank, I hope.

Wrong.  My Friend, Andy fooled us all yet again on another level.

Can you believe how well we were fooled, and how often we fell for it? It wasn't that we were gullible, either.  Andy was the only one who could do it, he was a master.

See, Andy really did die, and that's sad.  And there's no new stuff anymore, only old stuff, and that's sad too.  And we all know he's gone for good, and there will never again ever be him here to love us, or to let us love him.  And that breaks all of our hearts.

But he also didn't die, because still...we wonder.  We wonder when we think of the life he lived, if this might not still be another game.  We wonder because he fooled US, who knew him so well, and he did it so completely, and so many times. We wonder because he wanted to make us wonder.  To make us dream.  To make us want to know more.

We can't ignore his gift of doubt that he spent his whole life trying to create just for us.  His legacy is now our property.  We hold it in our hands.

Y'know, fan, I've met quite a few people who lived and died.  You probably know some yourself.  Maybe you even know a lot of "gone people".

Well think on this a minute:

I've only ever known one person who lived and died and all of the gang didn't believe he was gone and still half doesn't--and that's My Friend, Andy.

He knew us.  He knew how sad, how hard it would be for us, how we would miss him.  And he did all he possibly could to ease our pain, by bestowing a gift that only he could give.

He left the peanut gallery the doubt.  "The punch".  His last, and best game for his good friends.

...and we never even knew that he spent his whole life preparing to make sure we knew he loved us, even when he's not right there to say it.

-----------

So, the peanut gallery is still around, and we see fresh blood like yours all the time, fan.  We're going strong, because we "got" Our Friend, Andy's "punch"  We wonder, and we doubt, and we want to know more, and we have sing-a-longs to remember all the good times...

"Oh, Rose Marie we love you, we're always thinking of you..."

Sometimes we sift through the old stuff.  Just so we can hear the "set up" one more time.  Just for laughs.

"No matter what we do, we can't forget you..."

Sometimes, we tell fans like you about the old stuff, and it helps it to live again for us.

"Sometimes we wish that we never met you..."

Sometimes I wish that I could have met My Dear Friend, Andy, just once.

Just once.
 
 
 

--Holly Gold