Skip to main content

The Platypus of Doom


 

Have you ever been on a quest?

When I was in college my friends and I spent a weekend at the coast. We played games, did various touristy things, and had a good time (no, there wasn’t that much alcohol involved). We stopped in a little used bookstore in a small coastal town. It was cluttered with mismatched bookshelves and crates or boxes where there were no bookshelves. If there was any organization to it, the system was known only to the owner. That old used book smell permeated everything, a sweet musty odor that coated the back of your sinuses. In other words, it was a great bookstore. One to meander through the stacks of detritus where you might find a hidden gem. In the midst of our search, one of us found something and started to laugh. We all joined round. The object at hand was a book entitled The Platypus of Doom by Arthur B. Cover. But wait; there’s more! The back cover promised more dangerous creatures inside the book: The Armadillo of Destruction, the Aardvark of Despair, and The Clam of Catastrophe. We had a good laugh, and then put the book back on the self. We poked around the bookstore for a bit and then left. Occasionally on the rest of the trip and then on the way home someone would bring up the Platypus of Doom. By the time we got back home a couple of hours from that small town, we realized that we really should have bought the book. Now it would haunt us. What do you suppose was in that book? Would it be wonderfully funny, or just a cheap piece of schlock?

From time to time the book would come up again in our conversations, and I resolved the next time I was in that little coastal town, I would get the book and satisfy our curiosity. It was probably a year before I was back in that bookstore, but the book was gone. We had determined by now that the book was out of print, so the only place to find it would be a used bookstore (This was before Amazon.com, or eBay. It was pretty much before the internet was even a thing). Eventually curiosity turned into a minor obsession. We all looked for the book. We went our separate ways, two to different colleges, and one into the Marines. We spread out to different cities and different states, but wherever we went, we looked for the book. It was nowhere to be found. I even went to Powell’s City of Books in Portland, to no avail. Eventually I married, and enticed my wife into the quest. I would occasionally hear from my other two friends, but no one had any luck. It was as if the book had been a figment of our imagination.

The quest had taken on somewhat mythic proportions when one day, at least ten years later, my wife and I were in Portland and we decided to try Powell’s again. There she found it! In fact, she found two copies. What an amazing wife I have! I immediately took them to the cashier as if I was afraid that if I didn’t buy them that instant, they would disappear. I rambled about our quest to the cashier. She probably smiled politely as she took care of the rather eccentric customer who was so excited about this schlocky-looking paperback.

As soon as we got home, I read the book. As you might expect, the excitement of the hunt lies in the chase, not the capture. The book itself was not bad, a quirky funny little science fiction collection of four novellas or novelettes that unwittingly stumble us though the meaning of existence. And the platypus on the cover is wearing a bow tie! What more could you want? Not bad at all really, but as I said, the thrill was in the chase. I never quite found a quest that matched up to that one.

Star Liner


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove

  Despite both of us having science backgrounds, my wife and I share a leaning toward the artistic, though we may express it in different ways. In her life, my wife has been a painter, a poet, a singer, an actor, and a fiction writer. Not to mention a mother. I don’t remember what precipitated this event, but my wife, my son, and I were at home in the front room. My wife was responding to something my son said. She said, “remember, you get half your brains from me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a complete idiot.” To which my son started howling with laughter and said to me,” I think you have just been insulted.” Sometimes I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. I get no respect. But that is not an uncommon state of affairs for fatherhood. When my son was going to middle school and high school, my wife was always the one to go in with him to get him registered for classes. One time she was unable to go and I had to be the one to get him registered. “Ugh,” he said. “why can’t Mama do i...
1 comment
Read more

Empathy

  Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...
1 comment
Read more

A Deception

  I have a secret. I deceived my mother. Okay, it was like 50 years ago and she is gone now, but still . . .  I was generally a good boy. I did as I was told. My family lived a pretty strait-laced, middle-class, fairly conservative life. We were a G-rated family, well, until my older siblings broke the mold, but at this time, I was still in the mold. My friend Rich and I made a plan. Rich had asked me if I wanted to see Cabaret . He said he didn’t think much of Liza Minnelli, but he wouldn’t mind seeing her take her clothes off. We were like 13 years old and sex was ever-present on our minds as much as it was absent in our households. Cabaret was not rated R. It was rated PG. The ratings system has changed since that time. There was no PG-13; there was just the choice of G, PG, and R  (X was not an official rating).  Apparently the makers of Cabaret satisfied the ratings commission enough to escape an R rating, so it was PG.   There was therefore no law or ...
Post a Comment
Read more