GAZOOB, MY IMAGINARY-DWARF BOYFRIEND

M’s mention of Gazoob, my imaginary-dwarf boyfriend has resulted in a resounding demand from readers for more details.

I aim to please, so here’s the story of my second love (Setty/Shetty was first, remember?):

I don’t remember the exact moment Gazoob came to me. Sometimes it feels like he was always there, holding my hand, laughing at my jokes, talking to me about his feelings and encouraging me to confide my secrets to him. While I’ll concede that he wasn’t as funny as Wee-Man of Jackass fame (some people like comparing my Gazoob to Wee-Man), my imaginary-dwarf boyfriend was much hotter than him. Frankly, I think it’s a pipe dream to speculate that Gazoob might have aged to resemble Wee-Man. I’m sure he’s aging to perfection somewhere like Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson and Kevin Costner.

More importantly, Gazoob knew the secret to keeping a little lady happy: he gave me gifts. Whenever I happened upon a trinket or lucky pennies unknowingly dropped on the street or left behind in certain places, I knew that this was Gazoob’s doing, that these gifts were tokens of his love for me. The most special of these gifts was a beautiful bejeweled pin in the shape of a peacock that I found on the playground during lunchtime at school once. It was a brisk fall day and I’d been walking on the edge of the sidewalk, pretending that I was on a balance beam in the Olympics. Gazoob had looked on patiently, that pleasant smile of his sprawled across his face. I was on my final jump when I spotted the pin. The road suddenly became the velvet backing of a jewelry box and the pin reflected brilliant light in spite of the overcast day. I ooh’d as I picked it up between my fingers, and I could feel Gazoob looking on and smiling. I carried the pin in my pencil case throughout elementary school. I have no idea where it’s gone since Gazoob and I grew apart

Even at roughly four feet tall, Gazoob was a prepossessing lad (or perhaps I was so besotted with him that I could only see the good). He had an impressively bulbous nose that, ending in a fine point, reminded me of meringue cookies. His raven-colored hair was rakishly mussed and he liked standing with his arms folded across his chest. A pair of big, wide brown eyes sat on his creamy white skin. While he mostly wore green, he also had red and black in his wardrobe. He was never without his green beanie or his big green pointy-toed shoes.

Gazoob was my constant childhood companion. When we went on family road trips, he used to run alongside the car—sometimes he’d fly in a seated or standing position, his arms folded—and talk to me. At night, he’d keep me awake until I said my nightly prayers with him.

A friend recently suggested that Gazoob might have been a jinn. Jinns, in Muslim mythology are, according to my Mac dictionary “an intelligent spirit of lower rank than the angels, able to appear in human and animal forms and to possess humans.” If my mom knew about Gazoob (I have never told her), she’d say he was a jinn (she believes in all things supernatural) and that Gazoob is still holding a candle for me and secretly sabotaging my romantic possibilities. To think that he may not be over me is saddening because I’ve moved on from the world of imagination to the real world (while the move hasn’t proven to be all that successful, it’s a move nonetheless and it was made at an appropriate moment—puberty).

Maybe I need to exorcize this Pazuzu from my life (here, I shamelessly borrow from my friend’s demonological vocabulary).

For the record, I refuse to throw in “crazy” anywhere in my blog’s name. So don’t write to me asking me to call it “Crazy Revenge of the Nerddd” or “Revenge of the Crazy Nerddd” or something. It’s not happening.

There you have it: my second love.