The Exciting Return of Flat Stanley!

I opened an envelope from my niece in New Jersey the other day and, lo and behold, who came bounding out to say hello? Flat Stanley! He was a little shorter and a little wider than the one that my daughter brought home back in the fall, the one that longtime readers of FoodShed Planet will remember went to visit Kate and Maggie in Australia and somehow ended up touring the 2008 Olympic city of Beijing with the most lovely Chinese children.

For those who don't know, Flat Stanley is a book about a kid named Stanley Lambchop (gotta' love that name) who becomes flat accidentally and mails himself. It is a bit of a rite of passage to read this book in one of the lower grades in elementary school in the United States and then to make your own Flat Stanley and mail him to someone. It is a great honor to receive a Flat Stanley in the mail, to know that of all the options that that child had, he or she chose you.

And so I felt extraordinarily humbled by this honorable selection, and after seeing what Kate and Maggie did with my daughter's Flat Stanley, I also felt a bit inadequate. I don't have a boat to take Flat Stanley sailing, the way Kate did, or the exciting wattleseed bush and ice cream to show Flat Stanley enjoying, like Maggie did. Atlanta has nothing near as picturesque and newsworthy as Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and the Olympic hoopla has long since vanished from our 1996 Olympic city.

There, in the letter from my niece, however, was a mention that her class was particularly interested in showing what Flat Stanley did to be of help. Ahhhhh. Now I was on more solid ground. If Stanley wanted to help, help he would.

And so I will be sending pictures to my niece this week of Stanley using a rain barrel and reducing his (albeit tiny) carbon footprint by bike riding and mowing the lawn. Of Stanley enjoying the recycled go-cart we picked from a garbage and helping my mom in her wheelchair and playing in a contemporary bottle tree (made with recycled water bottles and a "repurposed" Christmas tree). In short, of Stanley moving in with us and living our life, day in and day out, in all its simplicity. And perhaps, just as my children have never seen a live kangaroo (although my daughter's Flat Stanley has!), perhaps my niece has never seen a rain barrel. Or a push reel lawn mower. Or chives when they flower. And perhaps she'll find that cool.

At least that's my hope.