Was I an evil kid? I don’t think so. Maybe devious, I guess I could say. No wait, I was craftily opportunistic! Do I have multiple personalities? I don’t think so. Maybe alter-egos, I guess I could say. No wait, I am creatively multifaceted.
It must have been my fifth birthday and I had received a stick horse as a present. Just a big stuffed head on a long dowel that was painted orange. Now that I think about it, it was probably lead paint. That might explain a few things and after all, It was the early eighties. I named her Bianca, most likely after the female mouse from the rescuers cartoon and most likely after a suggestion from my Mom. When left to name things using the wild and unhinged imagination of my own, names always seemed to be a little less normal. Like the crayfish I had named ‘license plate’. Yeah….. more on that one later. So anyways, Bianca and I had a fairly customary girl/horse relationship for the first little bit. We rode around the house searching for dragons to slay and whatnot, but then Bianca must have gone mad or something. She gained this new attitude and realized that whenever she was held high by her stick, she was way taller than everyone else. Oh my, superiority complex in a stick horse can be a tough thing to deal with. But, being a dragon slayer, what did I know about psychology? She started grabbing things from the top shelf of the food closet, hooking people’s feet as they walked by and when finally my Mom had enough, she scolded Bianca. Looking straight into her eyes as Bianca stood tall. Face to face, they were as she was threatened with being grounded and locked in a closet for a day. Who am I to say what was going through her head, but the wryly and problematic horse decided this was an unacceptable arrangement and head-butted my Mom square in the face. This would not be the last time, and it would definitely not be the last time Bianca was grounded for a week. We had an on again/off again relationship as Bianca was frequently incarcerated. Hard time in the slammer only fed her violent tendencies and she was often yanked from my grip after coming down full force repeatedly on my parents, sister or random visitors to the house. I remember this one incident in particular. There were some new faces in the house and I was too shy to meet them. Bianca, however, was curious. She stood as tall as she could in my grip and peeked around the corner of the livingroom at the guests on the couch. My Dad’s voice stopped in mid sentence and said “no Bianca, go back to your room”. Bianca swiveled her gigantic plush head and looked square at my Dad. I could tell he was starting to laugh but also quite nervous about the whole situation as he stared into those oversized plastic eyes. Bianca shook her head as if to say no in the most cocky way possible, and then turned her gaze slowly and deliberately back at the unsuspecting innocent people on the couch. There were traces of snickering in the room, but not from my parents. They knew what was almost certain to happen and Bianca must have sensed that the mood darkened in the room. When problematic stick horses get nervous, they most often strike without warning and lash out at the nearest person. She dropped like a guillotine straight at the face of the nearest guest. It may have impacted, or it may have been yanked from my grip millimeters from the bystander, I couldn’t tell for sure. Being in charge of an out-of-control and troublesome stick horse can be quite taxing on a young and fragile girl, so I often closed my eyes as she did the unspeakable. She was taken to the garage that day. The Alcatraz of all the penitentiaries, and with NO chance of parole this time no matter how good her behavior in the clink was.
All was OK though, I was getting a little too old for a stick horse by this time. Yes, definitely too old. What I needed now was a more portable version and since Bianca was a mute horse, I was craving some new stimulus, with all those new words I was learning…..
“I have never heard a noise like that come out of a little girl before!” -Gary Acres (Uncle Gary)
Family vacations in the summer consisted of driving in some gypsy mobile all over Alberta and B.C. seeing all the sights of this incredible corner of Canada. This year, I was probably about eight years old, and we stopped at Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump. It was customary for my sister and I to get one stuffed toy every year whilst on these trips. A stuffed buffalo in the gift shop caught my eye! Holy crap, I needed that like it was nobody’s business. My sister and I left the centre each holding our new friend. I looked into his beady little eyes and tried my best to make it introduce itself. What kind of a voice would a buffalo have? Gruff and sassy, I guess. With no planning, and in a voice that had never been uttered from my larynx before, came a demonic sounding “Hi, my name is Buffy” Now, being the kind of kid that craves attention and reaction, I was suddenly at the intense gaze of my whole family, and it was awesome! Buffy turned to them and said: “what the hell are you looking at?”. Oh no, this buffalo had quite the attitude. Why did I always get stuck with problematic plushies? It seemed though, that whatever he said, laughter would follow. He could literally say anything and for some reason, everyone thought it was hilarious. It would appear that Buffy decided to exploit this fact. He could get away with saying anything and as long as I was there to correct him and chastise his actions, we both seemed to stay away from most punishment. He was quite charming and charismatic, I guess, and was easily forgiven if he let his snide comments slip at severely inappropriate times. He tended to do this quite often. Soon, he started to record songs he wrote, he had a radio talkshow recorded on tape and was an avid ‘buffalo scout’ earning badges for numerous outdoorsy tasks. He enjoyed fishing and hiking and followed me everywhere. He even got his ears pierced and wore a horn ring. No matter what his accomplishments though, everyone just wanted to hear him talk. My parents would group everyone at a gathering and ask me if Buffy wanted to come out and sing a song or tell a native legend. (a huge part of Buffy’s past, before we met, was learning stories from native elders, human and bison) So Buffy would come out and say a few things and it seemed the more provocative and risky the words, the more people loved it. Buffy would say things that I was shocked to hear and would never think of saying myself. If he decided to drop a bomb and utter a real curseword, the crowd went WILD!
It was nice to have a friend like Buffy. He always had interesting things to say and seemed to convey what I was thinking and be able to speak it without hesitation. He now sits at my house weathered and old from many trips into creeks, being puked on more than once and repeatedly being soiled and washed. In fact, when placed beside his twin, my sister’s buffalo, he sits at two thirds the size and a few shades lighter in colour. Oh, and his many piercings never seemed to heal properly either.
Fast forward to my adult stage of development. I had been without an evil counterpart for ages and didn’t seem to need one. I said what I wanted and took the heat myself for my actions. Hmm, was this really a logical alternative? Yikes! Well, I am sure it would look odd to carry around a stick horse or stuffed bison and besides, if I needed to say anything, I said it. Or not. I picked up the local paper one day and was appalled at a letter from a resident that was talking about how she was killing Magpies and Crows in the neighborhood and felt she deserved a fucking medal or something. She had fabricated incidents of these innocent corvids torturing the pretty Blue Jays (also corvids) and murdering those cute singing Robins. She demanded the town implicate some kind of mass killing, as she could only do so much herself. I sat there in absolute rage! Half of me went to work right away writing a response in absolute scientific fact and educated retort dispelling all of her false claims and explaining the actions of the natural world and how we should not tamper with nature’s delicate balance. The other half of me sat there fuming, calling her a ‘bird racist’ over and over again. It was at that moment, my new alter ego was called into existence. Cat Ashbee sat with all the experience in ‘citizen science’ and years of birdwatching and studying behavior and wrote an intelligent and well thought out piece of work. Being careful not to say anything offensive and treating this angry letter writer like someone who was just misguided and needed some things put into perspective, I wrote with respect and humility. That letter aside, another response was written. This one used all the angry terms and low blows that I only felt but could never say. Signed…. Buffy Buffalo? No that wouldn’t do as it was way to fabricated. Well, my middle name is Emily and since this seems like an arrogant and self-fulfilling thing to do, the term faustian came to mind. Signed, Emily Faust. Both letters made the next week’s paper. Emily, you can say the things I would never think of saying. Welcome to the world of the living. Many years later I noticed that an acronym for ‘Emily Faust’ just happens to be: ‘Is faulty me’. How delightfully interesting!
Do I feel like I need this dual personality? I don’t think so. Maybe it is therapeutic, I guess I could say. No wait, I love Emily Faust. Emily, you have the balls to say anything. Whatever would I do without you, you crazy bitch.
