We have one of those little round floor vacs. It sits quietly in the corner until its schedule begins at 9:25 every morning. Then, it hums its way around our house and picks up all sorts of dusty fuzz I never knew was there.
I watched it go by me yesterday. I had to let it pass as I was walking into another room, and for some reason, the theme song to the Jetsons jumped forward in my mind.
It’s an easy song.
Meet George Jetson
His boy, Elroy
Daughter Judy
Jane, his wife.
Anyway, I sang the Jetsons song for a good part of the morning as I stepped over our little robot, whose name is Marvin. Instead, though, I called her Rosie all day in honor of the Jetson’s housemaid.
Of course, all of that brought on much more in this little brain of mine.
I pictured the Jetsons, all of them crammed into their little space car, off to work and school. And I noticed they all have whites in their eyes.
Yes, as they say, wait till you see the whites of their eyes.
All of them this way except for his boy, Elroy. Two black dots for peepers.
Even Astro, the dog, has eye whites.
My curiosity swelled.
“Come to think of it,” I said to our little round vacuum, “Wilma only has two black dots. And Barney’s eyes are just little circles too.”
I had to look. There was Fred, Betty, Dino, BamBam, Pebbles. All of them had whites in their eyes. Even the cat who locks Fred out every night has whites.
Not Wilma.
Not Barney.
And not his boy Elroy.
What gives Hanna Barbera?
Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, Snagglepuss. They have whites. I couldn’t possibly sift through all the Hanna Barbera characters because there are hundreds and hundreds.
But, of the big hitters, only a few are eye-white-less?
I’ve found no explanations for this online.
Hanna-Barbera studio never invested as much money in their cartoons as their rivals over at Walt Disney. That much is true. But I wouldn’t think it would have saved all that much ink.
Maybe there is a deeper reason. It is possible those eyes were made not to see.
Perhaps Wilma wouldn’t be able to see all of Fred’s shortcomings.
Same with his best pal Barney. In the end, they always looked the other way and forgave, bumbling Fred.
And maybe Elroy saw his Dad George in the same way, overlooking his character defects.
I’m spitballing here. But it could be, I suppose.
So then, what kind of eyes do we have in life?
What do we see? What do we notice?
And of those things, what do we keep with us?
The last couple of days, I’ve been especially struck, or reminded, just how much I don’t know about how any of this great scheme works — the world and all its heavens.
What is it we see?
Or don’t see.
What kind of eyes do we have in all of this?
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“Do not look too far for you will see nothing.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun
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“Hell of a thing to have to experience, hell of a thing to have to see, to be reminded you’re a human being and all it meant to be one.”
― Dean Koontz, Winter Moon
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“Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody.”
― Noel Langley, The Wizard of Oz
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