My equine alter-ego.

I have a niece and a nephew, but no kids of my own, which is how I like it. When I did want kids, I wanted teenagers, because I always thought that I could relate better to them than to younger kids. Unfortunately, they don't pop out halfway into puberty, which I think is a problem that can and should be worked on. We can have our entire CD collection in our pockets, right? Someone needs to get to work on this.

All of Sarah's immediate family lives close by; they moved here a few years after we did. I like having them here because my family lives further away, and we didn't really feel a connection to too many people when we moved here. When we all get together for dinner, it's usually on a Saturday (because I can stay out later). But, Saturdays are my busiest day at work, and I'm pretty tired if I don't get my Saturday nap, which I don't if we all have dinner together.

One Saturday in November of 2005, we all were together after dinner. November starts the busiest time of the year for me, so I was extra tired that day. Everyone had something to do (except me, I was just tired and cranky), and my niece Erin was sad because no one would play with her. Sarah, seeing I had nothing to do, told me to play with her. I objected, but she gave me the pointy finger and the angry voice, so I got down on the floor to play horsies with Erin. I was given a plastic toy horse, and I said his name was Geoff when asked (Geoff was supposed to be my or my sister's original name, I forget which. If my sister was a boy, of course). I was pretty cranky by this point, so Geoff was cranky. He was rude to all the other horsies, and Sarah was giving me angry looks. But Erin was enjoying it! She put Geoff into his own house, and she pretended to be trick or treaters coming to get candy from Geoff. Geoff proceeded to eat all the trick or treaters, which absolutely delighted Erin. We played a bit more, and then it was time to go. I didn't give Geoff another thought.

However, Erin fell in love with Geoff, and I really don't know why. She gave me Geoff to take home, since I was the embodiment of him, and she would call and ask to talk to Geoff (he was always angry because he was sleeping whenever she called). Geoff seemed to be taking on a life of his own. He started a blog, which my sister in law read to Erin. He sent her letters and postcards. He went and met other family members and took pictures, and he even came to work with me once.

I had made CDs for Erin that had fun rock songs on them, and so I made her one of horse songs from Geoff. On one of the CDs, I took an instrumental version of an REM song, wrote silly horse related lyrics to it, and then recorded them. The song also had an angry exchange between Geoff and the producer. Erin thought Geoff was the bee's knees after this, so I did more. I had some instrumental versions of songs, and I also found some karaoke online that I used. I did one completely by myself in Garage Band on our new-at-the-time iMac. I was a musician when I was younger, but I hadn't played regularly in over 15 years (which you can tell by listening to it). I thought the songs came out pretty good, even if I'm not the best singer in the world. But who can resist a plastic toy horse singing his own versions of Violent Femmes and Devo songs?

This took a long time, and I didn't have enough songs for a CD, plus I was having trouble coming up with a cover. So I decided to give Geoff a MySpace music page. Because I used actual backing tracks and didn't get permission to parody any of the songs, I thought it would be shut down right away. But it's been up for over a year, and people who've heard the songs like them a lot. I really would like to do more, and I also would like to try writing my own Geoff songs. This last is very daunting, as I haven't written a song in a very long time, and I haven't written that many either. But Erin still asks about Geoff, which I find very surprising. I figured she would grow out of it after awhile, kind of like I did. I am secretly glad she hasn't. I've been wanting to start playing again, and writing songs for a plastic toy horse seems to be the best way to do it.