Clarice here is not Clarice Starling with her good bag and cheap shoes (or was it good shoes and cheap bag, that hissed insult from Hannibal Lecter), but the original Clarice — the literally doe-eyed friend of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
I remembered Clarice after we saw Circus Amok last weekend because in our house, Clarice-the-deer is not the hyper-feminized bashful herbivore she is in the world of Rankin & Bass. Liam made her something else…
Last fall, for Liam’s birthday, we went to midtown with three of his friends, who have developed a tradition of going to Build-A-Bear Workshop for their birthdays. Why it’s become such a fixture with them, none of us can understand, but it’s easy and relatively painless as an outing, if you can resist the endless rows of bear-friendly accessories (wildly over-priced, just like accessories in the real world).
Liam spent long minutes perusing all his choices and then chose Clarice.
But then … what should Clarice wear?
The decision? Apparently, Clarice plays for the New York Rangers: blue plush pants, Rangers jersey, little blue pillbox “helmet” that sits awkwardly on top of Clarice’s permanently affixed red-and-white polka-dot bow.
The checkout clerk held up Liam’s creation to the other clerks and said “I’ve never seen this before.”
Given the almost endless permutation of ensembles available at BBW, it seems rather remarkable that Liam is the first to put together this combination. At Build-A-Bear, you can find every sports team, rock-n-roll, hip-hop, construction workers … You can even buy full combat uniforms for all branches of the military – with one significant omission, as one of Liam’s friends discovered: “WHERE ARE THE GUNS?” he bellowed.
And it’s not a bad question, really. I mean, if you’re going to sell Army bears, Marine bears, SEAL bears, Air Force bears … why not be completely honest about what you’re selling? Why is it okay to sell fatigues and uniforms from all branches of the armed services and yet sidestep the one thing that all these uniforms have in common?
If we all have the right to bear arms, why isn’t it all right to arm bears?
Clarice, by the way, had a wonderful season with the Rangers and will be starting at forward this year.
I think Jennifer Miller would approve.
