Flat Stanley - What Grandkids Can Do for You

Here's what happens when your kids grow up: You don't have Pop-Tarts in your house anymore, or drawings all over your refrigerator, or a box full of unmatched mittens on the closet floor. Plus, you miss things. You can read the newspaper every day, but all the news that's fit to print isn't all the news.

Fads come and go, but you haven't a clue, because no small human is racing in the door telling you that all the girls are wearing feathers in their hair, but monogrammed barrettes are so last year!

And then you have grandchildren and — presto — you suddenly know things again.

Grandkids keep you current.

My friend Mary Ann’s grandchildren, for example, were the ones who introduced her to Flat Stanley. Then she introduced him to me. She pulled him out of her purse in Times Square, a cutout paper drawing of a boy — round head, big eyes, bigger smile — handed me her camera, and posed with him under a Broadway street sign. It was only after I clicked that she actually explained who Flat Stanley is.

"He's a celebrity," she said, telling me that he’s been around for years and has circumnavigated the globe many, many times. Then, as if on cue, some passersby recognized him. "Hey! That's Flat Stanley," a woman walking with two teenage girls shouted. "Boy, have we been there. Remember?" And the two girls laughed.

Flat Stanley is indeed a celebrity, but he doesn't get all puffed up by adulation, or miffed when he gets recognized (or ignored). He doesn’t run around talking about his ex-wives, his houses, or his struggles with food, alcohol, or work. He isn’t pierced or covered with tattoos. With him, there are no arguments. No smooth talk. No backtalk.

Flat Stanley is the perfect traveling companion. And that's the whole idea.

Mary Ann explained that all the children in her granddaughter's kindergarten class have their own Flat Stanley. They drew the characters themselves, cut them out with a little help, then presented them to a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, friend, or neighbor — the one person they thought would love to have Flat Stanley as a daily companion.

Now all these Flat Stanleys are all over the country. Some go to work, some to the store, some to the movies — and some fly on planes and see the world. All these adventures (and misadventures) are photographed by Flat Stanley's hosts and sent back to the children to be shared with their classmates. "It's a way for young children to learn about the world," Mary Ann explained.

Having Flat Stanley with us helped us to learn a few things, too — or to relearn them, because he brought out the child in us. Just consider his name: Flat Stanley. You can't not smile when you say it.

Then there's his face. You have to smile at this, too, at all the faces he has — big ears or no ears, one eye or two, hair or no hair, a grin full of missing teeth or a mouth with no teeth. 

And then there are the outrageous things that Flat Stanley makes you do. Like propping him in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary in St. Patrick's Cathedral and snapping a picture. Or approaching a street hawker and asking him to hold him Flat Stanley. He said, "Sure, I'll do it,” of course, and he planted a kiss on Mary Ann's cheek as the camera clicked.

“No problem. I'll pose with Flat Stanley," a waiter offered, putting down his tray full of hamburgers and fries.

"Give me Flat Stanley!" a stage manager said, walking to the front of a theater and setting Flat Stanley center stage.

Flat Stanley freed us from the serious business of being adults for an entire day. We played. We took pictures of him riding the subway, propped on a bench at Central Park, drinking at a swank bar, posing at the Metropolitan Museum, and applauding at a Broadway play. 

Everywhere we went, he went. And because he kept smiling, we did, too.  

And people smiled back.

Flat Stanleys, it turns out, are a lot like grandchildren. They’re all over the world, making people smile and making grandparents feel young again.