Little Bunny Foo-Foo reprise

I'm sure you are all waiting breathlessly to find out which fabric we have chosen for our new sofa. Well, we are still waiting too.


In a turn of events unpredicted by the usual laws of male and female behavior -- particularly that law that says women can never make up their minds on such issues -- I have made a firm decision on which fabric I like, while the Hero, grasping the importance of such a decision, finds himself unable to quite commit to one choice or another.


The Hero is somewhat attached to the fabric that my sister calls the Little Bunny Foo-Foo fabric, which just shows that he is wholly unacquainted with the real character of Little Bunny Foo-Foo. Little Bunny Foo-Foo, who as mentioned in a previous post features prominently in a child's rhyme, is an individual not to be emulated, who displays a wanton disregard for authority and who delights in destructive behavior. In other words, an individual that kids can really like.


Little Bunny Foo-Foo, for reasons best known to himself, roams the forest looking for field mice that he can, as the rhyme indicates, "bop on the head." He is told thrice by a fairy godmother to cease this behavior, or dire consequences will occur. Although he makes some halfhearted attempts to follow this advice, he just cannot seem to avoid that little inner voice that says "Bop the field mice!" In the end Little Bunny Foo-Foo, yielding to this inner voice, comes to a very sad, yet somehow deserving fate: He is turned, by the fairy godmother, into a goon.


I had no idea, when I was young, what a goon was, but I knew that I would not want to be turned into one.


But to the Hero, the Little Bunny Foo-Foo fabric represents none of this sordid tale, and he appreciates the fabric's soothing pastoral qualities: trees, animals, grass, bunnies, field mice, no fairy godmother, etc. He does think it a little strange that there are strings of numbers and letters also woven into the design, but he is willing to overlook this.


On the other hand, he has objections to the design on the fabric I like, mainly because amid stately red vases, flowers, and vines, It also says, in random places, the year 1806.


"Why does it say 1806 on it?" he demanded. "Our house wasn't built in 1806. The sofa wasn't built then. Why should we sit on something that says 1806?"


"Maybe 1806 was an eventful year in the fabric industry," I suggested. We searched for events of note in 1806 but found none pertaining directly to fabric. We did learn that Andrew Jackson, who would later become president, killed a man in a duel in 1806 over Jackson's wife.


Probably the man had criticized the wife's taste in fabric. And Jackson bopped him on the head.