The Switch Pitcher

by W. Leon Smith

  In short time, the bears were given names. My sister’s bear was called Mean Bear while mine was named Fleddie Peddie since it rhymed with teddy.

  As time progressed, the bears accompanied us in a myriad of adventures. I remember, for instance, that we used to pretend that our bunk beds were pirate ships. Mean Bear would be captain of one ship while I was captain of the other. Of course, Fleddie Peddie was usually the first mate of my ship and my little sister was like a rover, sometimes siding with Mean Bear and sometimes helping Fleddie. She had a menagerie of other stuffed animals and a few dolls who also saw action atop the quilts that were wadded up and formed into mountains or barricades. Dog would stand at the foot of the bed. We pretended he would bark when Fleddie and Mean Bear tangled while trying to take over each other’s ship.

  My mom was a whiz with needles and thread. She created shirts for me to wear and dresses for my sister. Not long after the bears entered our lives, my mother started sewing attire for some of my sister’s dolls.

  “What about Fleddie?” I complained.

  “Okay, I will make something for Fleddie Peddie, too,” she said. His garment consisted of custom-made green corduroy trousers, which made him look even more human.

  In the early days of my association with Fleddie Peddie — when I was three and four years old — during winter months it was my task to light the fire in the gas heater in the mornings. We lived in a flagstone house with wooden floors that leaked cold air. We had only the one heater in the living room to warm the entire house. So by morning, with the heater unlit overnight, the house was like ice, with its sleeping inhabitants tucked snuggly under several quilts and blankets.

  I was always the first to arise, usually at 6 a.m. My parents slept until seven o’clock at which time my sister was nudged to get up, too. My father had to be at work by eight and my mother spent much of her day babysitting children whose parents also worked away from their homes, so our place would soon become a madhouse with kids seeking new adventures.

  The hour from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. was mine, though — and Fleddie Peddie’s and Dog’s. I would strike a match and get the fire going, then sit on the cold wooden floor in front of the heater in my pajamas and felt robe and watch the yellow and blue and orange flames shoot up the grates, while also paying attention to my comrades, whose amber eyes sparkled, as though they were trying to tell me something or simply agreeing with my thoughts. I enjoyed looking at the walls of the room and seeing shadows dancing about as I captured the warming effect of the fire. Soon the floor in front of the grates became very warm. I could contemplate how I was going to spend my day and daydream about me interfacing with some of my favorite television characters whom we watched frequently on our poor-reception black-and-white set. It wouldn’t be long before I could turn on Captain Kangaroo and see what Mr. Green Jeans, Bunny Rabbit, Mr. Moose, Grandfather Clock and Tom Terrific were up to, and I could daydream about pitching a game on a baseball field, doing heroic things, or as a cowboy riding my horse into the sunset, or helping Popeye fight the good fight, although I did not like spinach. I would usually acknowledge to myself that I would certainly spend part of the day cracking pecans with my very own hammer and play games and have contests with the other kids. The early mornings were magical for me. When I went to bed at night, I couldn’t wait until the next day.

  As the years passed, Fleddie spent most of his time perched upon Dog on a wooden dresser in my room. They witnessed all my new adventurers and in a way vicariously took part. They were there when I had the chickenpox and measles, when I skipped school, and when I first played 45 rpm vinyl records. They witnessed countless pillow fights and arguments and fun times. They became a bird perch when Bill the parakeet slipped out of his cage and tried to keep from getting caught My youthful history was theirs.

  By the time I was seven or eight, Fleddie Peddie and Dog received less of my immediate attention. I was more interested in bike riding, roller skating, catching crawdads in Fuller’s Pond, playing baseball and softball with my friends, fishing, and exploring, to just touch on the list.

  The bear and the dog had taken considerable abuse over the previous years. Fleddie had lost one of his eyes in a wrestling match and his snout lost most of its color. His fur, too, had become threadbare in places, but I still considered him my close friend and he maintained a place of prominence in my bedroom. Just seeing him there brought back fond memories.

  Fleddie was a Christmas bear. Sixty years later, he still exudes an element of magic whenever I see him. His cousin, Mean Bear, went missing in the late 1960s. His whereabouts are still unknown.

  About twenty-five years ago I was faced with an astronomical challenge. My wife and I had decided that it was time to get a Christmas bear for my 17-month-old daughter for the upcoming Yuletide. It would have to be “just the right bear.” It would have to have personality, character, and possess a magical air. And I would get to pick him out.

  I had about three months to find a stuffed bear that would have a personality akin to Fleddie’s. I wasn’t looking for anything expensive, elaborate, or talented, necessarily, just the perfect, trusting, magical bear. I casually browsed numerous stores when I happened on one that sold bears. There were plenty of bears to pick from, but finding the perfect one was difficult. I would know it when I found him.

  And I did. Success was attained as the last minute neared. The bear I chose did not do tricks, he didn’t talk or growl, and he wasn’t a duplication of a Saturday morning cartoon character. His personality spoke to me and I hoped this would be conveyed to my daughter, much like Fleddie Peddie did for me. He was a rather large black bear, the type of bear to grow up with through thick and thin, one that could be a loyal friend and watch over her at night.

  On Christmas Eve night the bear arrived near the tree, sitting in a child’s wooden rocker with a bright green bow tied around his neck. My daughter gave him a big hug.

  I had, at least temporarily, named the benevolent creature Mr. Goodbear. The title stuck. Twenty-five years later he still resides with my daughter and when anyone in the family mentions Mr. Goodbear, everyone knows who he is.

  Peripheral Acceleration

  The family was riding in a car along a country road lined by fence posts strung with barbed wire. The father was driving, his wife at his side, while in the rear the boy sat behind his father and the girl behind her mother. The kids were bored with playing their card game, Old Maid, and were ready to embark on more exciting things, which meant playing the alphabet game -- scanning for signs that contained words whose first letters helped in the collection of the ABCs, in order. The hardest were the letter Q as in “Hospital – Quiet” and Z as in “Zone.” They often skipped X, another difficult letter that sometimes was found as “Xing” meaning “Crossing.”

  The car had no air conditioning. All windows were lowered. The interior and its inhabitants endured continuous blasts of 60 mile per hour winds that summer day. The girl, age eight, took her favorite ring off her finger, placed it in the palm of her right hand, then stuck her arm out the window and extended her palm toward the front, the ring resting in the middle of her open hand. The ring was kept in place by the force of the wind. If the ring dropped, it would be lost forever amongst the gravel shouldering the road. It did not drop. She soon closed her hand and brought the ring back into the car and returned the ring to her finger.

  “I don’t know why I do this,” she said, “because it is so dangerous. I would die if I lost my ring.”

  “Then why do you do it?” asked her slightly older brother.

  “I just have to do it.”

  About that time, their much younger brother, a toddler who had been leaning on his mother as he sat in the front seat between his parents, had just finished drinking from his small plastic bottle. He stood in the seat, looked both ways, and then threw the bottle out the window, right past his mother’s nose.

  “That’s it,” she said with a half-smile. “That’s the last one, gone for good.” Th
e boy had taken glee in throwing his bottles out the window and getting away with it; however, this was his last one, meaning that he, like a drunk who had taken his last drink, had abruptly forfeited that vestige of babyhood and was definitely growing up.

  The cedar posts kept sliding by and now the travelers were about a mile from the next city.

  “I am feeling sick,” said the girl, who had been looking out her window.

  The mother turned to gaze into the back seat. “What’s wrong?”

  “Car sick again,” the girl replied. “I feel terrible.”

  “Calm yourself and take deep breaths,” said the mother. She turned to her husband. “Slow down some. I’m worried about her. This happens all the time.”

  He slowed the car to 45 miles per hour and ambled into town, where they stopped at a relative’s house to visit while the girl recovered some. Shortly thereafter, the family would head to their own home located in another city with hopes that the little girl would be okay.

  FAST FORWARD 53 YEARS

  The older brother who now resembled the elderly scientist in the original Jurassic Park movie, being about the same size with a white beard and a tendency to overanalyze things other people take for granted, had stumbled onto something – a truth that he deemed could change the world. It was something that had bothered him for years.

  “I have to unload this on someone,” he told a much younger friend and former business associate who had stopped by his office to visit. “I hope you forgive me for telling you this, since it could change your life forever, and not necessarily for the better, but I feel I must tell someone. Are you okay hearing this?”

  The perplexed man in his 30s sitting across from him appeared inquisitive, which meant yes.

  “Decades ago, the medical profession made a ruling on a condition that persuaded doctors to callously prescribe drugs to remedy, but their diagnosis was dead wrong, at least in strong measure. Today, even in these modern times, their diagnosis stands as does its treatment. The downside is that if the general public knew the truth about the condition, it could prove deadly for them and disrupt their lives when it might be best that they do not know.”

  The friend was listening but not understanding.

  The man continued. “If I tell you what this is, you will likely never forgive me. It could cause you lots of problems. It is about noticing the obvious. You experience it virtually every day, but I predict you have never noticed it to the degree that the depth of the truth provides. Once known, you cannot turn it off. It will haunt you endlessly.”

  The friend had become interested. “I want to know,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, definitely.”

  “Okay, if you are sure.” The older man paused a few seconds, thinking of how to best explain. “I can’t properly tell you here,” he finally said. “Let’s go for a drive. Proof is in the paces.”

  The friend grabbed his water bottle and the man snatched up his half-filled Styrofoam tumbler of iced tea and out the door they went seeking the man’s car. He backed the car out of the driveway while the friend, sitting beside him, looked out the window. The two exited the residential area and made it to a farm-to-market highway that led out of the city.

  “Where are we going?” asked the friend.

  “No place in particular,” said the man, who upped the speed to 65 mph. About a minute later he asked the friend, “What do you see?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t look at the speedometer. I mean what do you see outside of the car?”

  “Things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well……there’s a house over there, a fence, some street signs, the road, grass in the fields, a few cows to my right, a windmill, is that what you mean?”

  “And what are they doing?” the man asked.

  “Just sitting there,” said the friend.

  “And we’re passing them by,” said the man.

  “Yes.”

  “They were in front of us, and then beside us, and then behind us, out of the scene.”

  The friend was trying to ascertain the point. “Right.”

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” said the man. “Turn your head 90 degrees from forward, toward your window, and look squarely out the window with your eyes trained on the grassy ditch.”

  The friend obeyed.

  “Now tell me what you see in extreme detail.”

  There was a long pause. “It’s just a blur,” said the friend, “colors of green and brown and yellow whizzing by. There is no detail.”

  “Keep looking but turn your eyes slightly upward toward the fence posts.” He waited a few seconds. “Now count the posts for me.”

  “I can’t. They are passing by too quickly and are not sharp. By the time I put a number on one of them, several have already passed by.”

  “Okay,” said the man. “Now turn your eyes slowly to the left, about 45 degrees, pointing forward with the direction of the car. Now what do you see?”

  Another pause. “Things are moving fairly fast still.”

  “Now, look out the window again as you did initially.” The friend did so. “Now move your eyes to your right.”

  “Ooh, still very blurry,” said the friend.

  “Now, I want you to look forward as though you are driving, with your eyes on the center of the road as far ahead as you can see.”

  The friend turned his head and stared in that direction.

  “Note how the far point in the road is rather stationary, while things that are angled on both sides, in your peripheral vision, seem to be moving.”

  The friend did it.

  A few moments later the older man said, “Do you see that speed limit sign way up there on the horizon, on your side of the road?” The white, slightly rectangular sign was easily visible far ahead.

  “I see it.”

  “Watch that sign. It is fairly stable right now, but as we get nearer it will continually accelerate in movement, getting faster and faster the closer we get to it, and then it will vanish behind us.”

  It was gone a few seconds later. “Now, find a fence post up ahead, focus your eyes on it, and watch it the same way. It starts out rather still, but then speeds up as it moves closer to us and past us.”

  The friend did it.

  “Now look on both my side the road and on your side of the road and focus on one imaginary flat 90-degree plane about halfway to the horizon. Focus on everything except the center point.”

  The friend did it, wrinkling his brow. “Now everything, and I do mean everything, I see appears to be coming at us at blinding speed, except the center point,” said the friend, “and I am feeling nauseous.” He tried to not look out the window for a few seconds to get his bearings.

  “I call it peripheral acceleration,” said the man. “This can result in car sickness, or what doctors call motion sickness they claim is caused by an inner ear disturbance when a person is bounced around. I deem that this ‘sickness’ is actually caused by focus on the periphery, or truth as it might be termed. I tend to think that people who get car sick are aware of the entire picture, where most people ignore it. The ignorant focus on one thing and do not analyze what they are seeing. However, if they become aware of the entire picture, the movement of things on the periphery becomes overwhelming, to the point that they can become ill, even dizzy, as they try to navigate through space. This is because the view they are seeing is mainly the angles on the sides of the roads and a blending of their periphery vision.”

  The man slowed the car, edged to the shoulder, and made a U-turn to head back to town.

  The older man continued, ”Why do you think so many people become seasick in ships? It is because they are usually confined to seeing movement from the sides or at an angle. Most are not privy to the front view, like in a car. People who fly have a similar situation to deal with. What makes it worse is driving with windows down, or riding on the side of a ship where the wind bo
unces against your skin and amplifies the effects of periphery acceleration. You not only see it, but you feel it, especially if you have a tendency to see it all. Another element is what you are looking at. Is it a fairly blank field or are trees next to the road, close to you, moving faster, magnifying the effect?”

  “Huh,” said the friend thoughtfully. “Makes sense.” He was looking out the windows again. “Now, even when you are going slowly, it is hard for me. Everything is in motion, like we are traveling inside a cone to its peak down the road. The internal sides of the cone are dominant and are freaking me out. I never noticed them this way before.”

  “Precisely.” The car was accelerating. “Now try to turn it off. Try to deny the movement of everything coming at you.”

  They traveled for two miles. “I can’t,” said the friend. “My stomach feels a little better, and I can turn it off for a few seconds, but then it’s back again. Everything is moving, very fast and very clearly, coming at me and making me somewhat dizzy. I know it’s always been there but I quite simply never noticed it, at least to this degree.”

  “I know,” said the man. “It is nearly impossible to ignore. You now have to persuade your mind to again deny what you are seeing, which takes concentration, since you are fighting the truth. Personally, I keep slipping inside and out of it. Now you can see why I am perplexed about sharing this with the world. Will it cause accidents? Will it ruin pleasure travel? Is it better that people continue to deny the truth?”