Taken from an article by Katie Zezima, published in the New York Times Sept. 29, 2006 (no, I'm not making this up):
... “Where’s Flat Daddy?” an excited Baylee asked as her stepmother, Jennifer Smith, pulled a large cardboard picture of Sergeant Smith, in his uniform, out of her Chevy Blazer and propped him on the bumper. The two, along with Ms. Smith’s young sons, Alec and Derek, posed for a picture with their Flat Daddy, who promptly fell down.
... “It’s nice to see him each day, just to remember that he’s still with us,” Ms. Austin said. “It’s one of the best things I’ve done during this deployment. I really think it’s helped us stay connected, to remember that he’s still with us.”
... Her flat husband spends most of his time in their bedroom closet, but she will occasionally take him out to show to friends or to look at herself.
“He went away so recently after we got married that sometimes I look at it and say, ‘Oh, I’m married, and he’s real and he’s gorgeous,”’ Ms. Williams said.
...“At first, it can take you aback, but it never did for me,” Ms. Campbell said. “I just felt like her presence is here. The Flat Soldier does provide comfort, and we’ll take it any way we can.”
4 comments:
This picture will have a profoundly different meaning if he dies in combat.
Kind of like the old psychological experiments where they took two groups of baby monkeys away from their mothers. One group of babies had their mother replaced with a wire figure. The other group had no replacement. The monkeys with the wire mother turned out way better than the ones who had no mothers at all. Still, a little disturbing, don't you think?
Disturbing indeed.
I forget where I heard it, but the term cardboard father rings a bell. one that's never there, or was it a replacement parent?
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