By JoEllen Collins
Even in the light of our unremitting political overload, I cannot resist telling my readers this rather sweet story featuring Joe Biden, me (Bibi Jo) and my grandson.
I consider myself a storyteller, and thus am always delighted to share that quality with my grandchildren, Artie and Goldie. A continuing source of laughter is the series we have called “Ishtah” about a pile of abandoned garbage that magically absorbs a soul from discarded books and memorabilia. Ishtah can leave his enclosure but isn’t able to go far because of his smell, resulting in unique misadventures.
At bedtime, when Artie was 6 to 7 years old and Obama still President and Biden VP, Artie and I developed a different set of tales. The series concerned dangerous situations for Obama, so mystifying that even the Secret Service was puzzled until they discovered the fresh perspective of a young boy in San Francisco who would, with his youthful and fresh perspective, somehow be able to magically imagine safe solutions to the frightening threats. Our stories involved kidnappings and betrayals in countries all over the world. We loved these tales and often laughed at our fantasized rescues.
One night we changed things a bit and decided to hold an emergency Cabinet meeting. We found a box holding small stuffed animals from his babyhood, and put them in a circle on the bed, Obama the largest of them all. The roll call at the meeting began, and Artie and I immediately realized we had left out the essential Veep, Joe Biden. The Secretary of State left the meeting, found Joe and returned with the only tiny stuffed creature left, a Teddy bear holding a blanket. That’s when we realized that, apparently, Joe had been taking a nap.
This incident predated any of Trump’s comments about “Sleepy Joe,” at least any made in public. We laughed to the point of tears at his “needing time out to snooze,” a situation we would never have imagined except for the toy’s blanket. We kept this gag going through the rest of our meetings with Obama: Why was Joe not speaking up: where was he? Some teeny fat pig would say, “Wake up, Joe,” and then Sleepy Joe would shake his head and rejoin the meeting, usually with a brilliant thought, perhaps gleaned from a dream. Since his blanket was sewn into the plush material of his lap, he could not remove it, so we always had a chance to giggle. We loved him as a leader and (as we hoped) tolerant object of our gentle, cartoonish play about him.
I often make self-deprecating jokes about my grandmotherly foibles, absentmindedness, silly mix-ups and backseat driving. I don’t mind the teasing. Like Joe, I am part of a loving, gently humorous family, so we could tease his fluffy image as well. We’ve missed him. We will always treasure the wry smiles we have when someone calls Biden “Sleepy Joe.” Maybe we’ll come up with a more appropriate version of Joe this time around.
