Gentleman’s Kangaroo Caddy

Arlington, MA, 1959

From the time I was a child—maybe 5 or so—this ceramic boxing kangaroo caddy sat on my dad’s dresser. He slipped rings onto the tail, placed tie pins and cufflinks in the pouch, and filled the open sack on the kangaroo’s back with loose change.

My dad didn’t leave many heirlooms. When he died in 1984, at the age of 54, this was the only possession of his that I “inherited.”

Made in 1956 by Fine Enterprises this caddy was, in my mind, unique to my father. I’d never seen anything else like it. Imagine, then, my astonishment when, in 1994, the exact same kangaroo appeared as a prop in the film Pulp Fiction. The kangaroo’s tail holds a gold watch, which Bruce Willis slips onto his wrist—right before shooting John Travolta. The sight of the kangaroo so disoriented me that I actually wondered, for a split second, if Quentin Tarantino had stolen it from my bedroom.

We live in an age when nothing is unique. Searching for the kangaroo on DuckDuckGo, I found dozens of them for sale—one of them holding a joey between its boxing gloves. Do you see those paws as boxing gloves? What else can they be? A nutty ex-girlfriend of mine thought they were boobs.

In one respect (the illusion of uniqueness), the kangaroo is like this book. 108 Beloved Objects seemed a highly original idea when I first thought of it, years ago. Now there are plenty of object-oriented books—from The Museum of Broken Relationships to Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? to A History of Baseball in 100 Objects. Now The Moth is doing something similar. I didn’t even get to hold onto my number: e.g., 108 Objects from Flight 815.

Oh well.

Even so, this is a tough one to let go of. Aside from its sentimental value, the caddy now holds my rings and tie pins. The sack on its back, once filled with pennies and dimes, is stuffed with my collection of buttons and badges (see Man from U.N.C.L.E. pins). What will become of all that “beloved” stuff? Should I include it with the kangaroo? Or save it for a sequel?