"It's The ..."

This is the beginning of the title of a book Brian wrote when he was in second grade.  The full title was “It’s The Sausage!” -- a provocative title indeed.  I barely recall this book when it was around. 

Brian and I were creative children.  Throughout our childhood we put on plays for each other. 

My plays were brisk, laugh-a-minute romps populated by crude, two-inch paper figures attached to extended coat hangers, which I operated from beneath the stage.  I remember one especially powerful stage effect from the finale of “The Scary Christmas Kidnapping”: on the soundtrack, Aileen Quinn and her fellow Orphans sang “Tomorrow” from “Annie”, while a foil helium smiley face balloon rose behind my paper figures, signifying the rising sun and the promise of a new beginning for everyone.

Brian’s plays were dull epics featuring a cast of endless stuffed animals, which droned on and on, with titles like “Many Moons.”  Some the audiotapes survive.  A favorite quote comes from a scene where a wife (probably played by a stuffed walrus, or Garfield) must make a tough decision, and without concern for her own well-being, declares, “My husband’s life is more important than mine.”

I’m a bit ashamed to admit that we did these plays well into my high school years.

Brian lost his copy of “It’s The Sausage!”, and he somehow got the dangdest notion: when I graduated from high school, I buried a time capsule behind the garage, to be unearthed in ten years.  I filled it with cherished high school memories, awards, and deep thoughts about who I would become in the ensuing decade.  Brian -- wrongly -- became convinced that among my treasured heirlooms I’d also buried his copy of “It’s The Sausage!”

I’m not sure why he thought that.  I asked him once, and he said, “It disappeared about the time you buried your time capsule.”

Brian went on to do very funny spoken-word performances in San Francisco, but a good deal of his act seems to have been spent aligning Bay Area hipsters with himself regarding the “It’s The Sausage!” controversy.  Even now I dread meeting some angry, pierced lesbian who wants to set things right.

That Brian did not win his Pulitzer cannot be blamed on me.  I fear “It’s The Sausage” will forever be catalogued alongside the lost works of Euclid.