©2009 by Donna Cunningham
I’ve been a weeble all my life. What’s a weeble? It’s a Hasbro‘s Playskool toy that was popular in the 1970s. You may recall the slogan, “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” They were shaped like a bowling pin except rounded on the bottom and weighted so that if you pushed one down, it sprang right back up.
I was thinking this morning about myself and how I approach life. (You won’t be the least bit surprised to know I do that a lot.) I was reflecting on how I’ve always bounced back, no matter how rough things got. I bounced back from growing up in an alcoholic family. I bounced back—albeit slowly—from a broken heart. I bounced back from cancer 15 years ago. From hip replacement. From the catastrophe the two hip surgeries wreaked with my finances. Just like a weeble. And though I don’t bounce back from such difficult passages with quite the snap that a toy weeble does, you’ve got to remember that toy weebles have wooden hearts, so theirs probably don’t hurt as much as ours do.
What’s the astrological signature of a weeble, do you suppose? I’d say tons of fire signs in the chart (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius) and/or a plethora of aspects to the rulers of those signs (Mars, the Sun, and Jupiter, respectively). Probably a fairly strong Pluto, for regeneration and the Phoenix rising from its own ashes. And, yes, I plead guilty on all three counts. (ADDED LATER: See the continued discussion on the signature in the comments section…and add your own speculations.)
Anyway, I’ve been anticipating the next rollover digit on my birthday…oh, sometime this summer. I’m at a happy and contented place these days—retired from doing the things I don’t want to do any more and free to spend as much time as I like doing the things I love, like writing wee bits of fluff for this blog.
I got to wondering if I’d bounce back quite as well as I used to from something really hard. Does a 67 year-old-weeble get back on her feet as quickly as one that doesn’t have quite as many miles on the old odometer?
Hmm. More slowly, perhaps. With more of a time of secluding myself from the world and licking my wounds. But I WOULD, I just know I would. Haven’t I always?
I was searching in Google Images for a picture of a weeble to use with this post, good fun in itself. Serendipity struck when I ran across the cartoon you see here. I visited the artist’s sites and spent a delightful half hour looking at her smart, ironic, but whimsical drawings. I wrote to ask permission to use the drawing, and she was happy for it to appear here. Her name is Mitra Farmand, and her two sites are http://fuffer.wordpress.com and http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuffer2005/ . I suspect her of being a weeble herself.
(If you want to see a Weeble in action, there are a number of videos on You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FdXX0FNLps. Or, keep following this blog to see how a 67 year old human weeble does it.)
Hey, what about a bunch of earth for the weeble? Nothing keeps the feet on the ground no matter what like some earth! And how about water, to keep going with the flow?
Perhaps both strength and flexibility are the keys, no matter how we get to it. (I don’t think Pluto can be removed from the equation, though!)
By: Deborah on June 9, 2009
at 9:24 pm
I can see why you’d suggest earth, as it does lend perseverence. But to me, earth doesn’t really bounce so much as it plods. I think for bounce you need the Ever-Ready Bunny-ness of the fire signs. So, earth signs aren’t really Weebles. No doubt there are toys for earth signs–but they’d be adult toys like Ferraris.
Incidentally, folks, Deborah Bier is my co-editor for Vibration Magazine, the premier online educational resource for flower essences, with some 400 articles in our archives and now a weekly blog. This month we’re celebrating our 11th anniversary, so come visit us at http://www.floweressencemagazine.com/blog. Donna
By: Donna Cunningham on June 10, 2009
at 11:53 am
Hi, I think that Deborah has a point there about a good earth sign….. Ever see a charging Bull? No plodding there when the Bull gets its MoJo working. I guess having as much Bull in me as I do I consider myself a good Weeble Woobler. And I do love Farraris…… and fast air planes….. but slow plodding foreplay, so maybe not a real dyed in the wool Weeble but a tainted Uranus Weeble..
By: Lynne on June 10, 2009
at 5:04 pm
Seems like all three–Leo, Ares and Sag–have a strong “faith” factor going. Faith in themselves mostly! (which isn’t a bad way to live life)
When the s*it hits the fan, these signs/planets, even though pushed down, again and again, just refuse to stay down. Fire rises.
With Pluto, too, if you have a lot of Pluto/Scorpio in your chart–you’re a survivor–even if you don’t necessarily wanna be!
By: Nancee on June 12, 2009
at 7:42 pm
[...] Clueless after all these years was fairly innocuous. Self-revealing but still light-hearted was: On Being a Weeble at 67 . When things really got hairy was when I wrote Cancerians, Memory and Emotion and revealed what [...]
By: A Water Sign, in her Element at Last—Writing Wet, not Dry « Sky Writer on June 23, 2009
at 4:05 pm
Heh. I’m a Bull Sun/Scorpio rising with a lot of fire planets. I liken myself to a cockroach because no matter how many times I get squashed, somehow I just don’t die. I don’t bounce up cheerfully, but I still don’t die.
By: Jennifer on June 25, 2009
at 6:41 pm
Hi, Jennifer, you’re right: Scorpio–the sign ruled by Pluto–isn’t as much like a Weeble as it is a cockroach. The Plutonian who’s been squashed a whole bunch of times isn’t like a weeble, but more like a paraplegic who’s absolutely determined to do situps…and by golly, they do! Donna
By: Donna Cunningham on June 25, 2009
at 10:22 pm
Thanks for the link!
Mitra
By: fuffer on July 18, 2009
at 12:52 pm
Hmmm… This is interesting, I have 5 planets in Saggi, with Saturn, Mars and Pluto, all 3 planets aspecting all the 5 planets from an air sign.
That is 2 out of 3, considering that Pluto is in 9th house, I would call it strong. That makes it 3 out of 3
.
I am a weeble too, just need to learn to wobble back sooner.
By: Byrappa on January 26, 2010
at 10:19 am
That is why you have such a lovely, authentic voice. You have lived it.
By: Kathryn on February 15, 2010
at 5:26 pm
Thank you, Katherine, you do understand! Donna
By: Donna Cunningham on February 15, 2010
at 6:39 pm
I was going to make a case for the Weebleness of Pluto, since I am another Weeble and the only fire in my chart DOES come from Pluto, which aspects almost everything in my chart. However, I can also relate to Jennifer’s cockroach analogy. can’t relate to the paraplegic doing sit-ups, though. Maybe that’s because I’m a Pisces and I can’t see the point of doing sit-ups — with or without legs!
By: Donna on April 23, 2011
at 1:30 pm
Hi, DVT! Glad you enjoyed the post. And thank you again for being one of my guest bloggers. Donna C.
By: Donna Cunningham on April 23, 2011
at 8:01 pm
hi-i really related to this, my brother once named me most likely to step in shit but least likely to really mind… I have sun in aries in a grand fire trine and also in a t-square withmy moon and pluto in the first house
By: Vanessa on April 25, 2011
at 8:11 am
Oh interesting. as I’ve come to this little weeble sidebar from the interview questions post, my response is mixed up with your story of the bookshop: I too was introduced to my interest in the esoteric and transformative when I lived in the East Village, and bought a copy of the IChing from the Weiser bookshop on Broadway (back in the early ’80′s).
I am very interested in “resilience” (an apt song accompaniament to the weeble wobble could come from the Chumbawamba song: I get knocked down, but I get up again- big hit in the 90s); and continue to be intrigued by my peculiar mix of both its absence and its presence in my character. There is no way I would have got this far without, in my case, Tarot, but Astrology is this whole other playground that seems lately to have claimed my attention – pretty much all kicked off by your Pluto book falling into my hands a few months ago. (This geography business you mention – I’m going to start wrapping my head around that soon: what a goldmine – that’ll be when I’m full up with investigating the past life stuff.)
In my chart, I have 2 outer planets in Fire: pluto is one of them, and uranus, and also Saturn in Fire. That’s not so much fire, but what I do have is Mars involved in 2 separate Yods (and Jupiter and the Sun in a grand trine, and the sun in opposition to Saturn in Fire). Now that I’ve read this weeble blog, I am intrigued all over again with the differences between persistance and resiliance, and the Fire based weeble, vs. the Earth based persistance. The bull’s focussed, driven energy, as choleric as it seems when in the ring, is essentially different from that Fire energy, ipso facto, elementally. I have become more and more aware of what I have called my stubborn ability to persist, over the years, quite pleased, indeed, to understand what an ally it’s been (Venus in Taurus is one sign of this quality), but am even more pleased today to have my awareness pushed further into understanding that I’ve also had this fire based resilience in my repetoire.
What about Cardinal vs. Fixed and Mutable and the weeble factor?
Thank you, once again, for sharing so generously the incredible range of your knowledge, experience wisdom and insight, and for coming so far out of the cave (cancer) with these interview questions…….and good luck with the Dragaon Naturally Speaking……I too have recently bought that software, and yes, it is hysterical, some of the mistakes it makes: I spend almost as much time editing the mistakes as I do dictating…..but, I understand, this gets better with enhanced recognition………..I found that it was my shoulder, rather than my hands (I’m a Gemini sun), and I wonder too, if compression of the lungs, somehow is part of it: when I type, doesn’t matter how I set myself up, I always end up hunkered over the keyboard: I’m able to stay sitting up straighter when I dictate. Cheers, genevieve.
By: genevieve ahearne on July 30, 2011
at 7:12 pm
It’s interesting that you say the Pluto book fell off the self into your hands–you would not believe how many people have told me that in the 25 years sinjce it was published. Donna
By: Donna Cunningham on July 31, 2011
at 2:20 am