Was It Butterfly Kisses or Was It Butterfly Flossing?

It’s the heated car seat season.

That’s another reason there is no need to spend a winter in the south. Unless it’s Algona, Iowa. That’s my idea of the tropics.

“How are you doing?” was how I greeted an audience member after I’d given a long-winded talk.

I asked that in the hopes of making a connection, but knowing it’s not always the best question because people sometimes tell you how they are doing. When I’m asked that question, I try to answer with “Great,” but I occasionally fail to do so and give a reply that isn’t great. I’ve asked people how they were doing and been given a play-by-play, complete with excruciating details, of a recent gallbladder operation that involved the need for a relief surgeon after the original surgeon fainted after a mere glimpse of that gallbladder.

I admire the commitment needed to share all that information, but responses like that are why we talk about the weather.

We learn there are friends and family members who you don’t ask that question. Humans are slow learners and quick forgetters. That’s why I keep asking, “How are you doing?” because I hope people are swell and getting sweller.

The fellow I asked didn’t tell me how he was doing – good or bad. Instead, he showed me an ancient cassette tape. It was “The Best of The Lovin’ Spoonful.”

He told me a story reminiscent of the opening line by Charles Dickens, in his book “A Tale of Two Cities,” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

He said he thought I’d be interested in the cassette. He couldn’t think of anyone else who might be. He added that he’d listened to “Do You Believe in Magic?” and “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?” before he asked his girlfriend to marry him. She said, “Yes.”

He went on. “I listened to ‘Didn’t Want to Have to Do It’ when we were divorced.”

The Lovin’ Spoonful cassette had outlasted his marriage.

After the divorce, he was granted custody of a cassette that could no longer produce music, even if he’d had a device that played cassettes. We discussed our shared history of manually rewinding cassette tapes with a pencil or a BIC pen to take up slack or clear a jam. The pencil or BIC pen was inserted into the cassette’s reels and twisted to rewind the tape, hoping to preserve the tape from being chewed up by the player.

It was too late to rewind that cassette or his marriage. He kept the silent cassette because it brought him a few good memories.

I tried to be helpful, telling him he could listen to those songs on the internet.

He said that it wouldn’t be the same.

He was right.

A couple of days later, I was in the Butterfly Wing of Reiman Gardens in Ames, Iowa. It’s a glorious place where humans join a flutter or kaleidoscope of butterflies. A blue morpho, a shimmering blue butterfly, landed on me. That brought me great joy and I hoped good luck. I wanted to laugh but feared I’d swallow a butterfly. I wanted a waffle for lunch instead, and was about to leave the Butterfly Wing and hunt down a waffle when a small butterfly landed on my chin. Its feet tickled and its proboscis found the moisture on my teeth inviting. To this butterfly, I was a large and dorky flower.

The butterfly was happy to be where it was, and I had no urgent need to shave. After cleaning my teeth, the insect hunkered down on my chin.

An employee of Reiman Gardens took photos of my butterflied chin. I sat down to ease her task. An endless line of kids, parents and grandparents happened along. I asked everyone how they were doing. Not everyone heard me because their attention was concentrated on the chin butterfly. Many selfies were taken with the butterfly and my chin. Others took those rare photos that aren’t selfies. It takes all kinds. One kid asked me, “Are you somebody?”

I was.

I was somebody with a butterfly on his chin.

How was I doing?

Great. Like The Lovin’ Spoonful, I believe in magic.