Normal Norman has been singing all his life. He remembers, in particular, being selected as "Best Singer" in Sister Mary Godfrey's fourth grade class - nevermind that Norman's class consisted of assorted frogs, dogs, and crows . . .

Well not really, but little Norman loved to sing. He started making up songs when he was a teenager. He'd be on his newspaper route and start humming little melodies he heard in his head, then he'd add words, and pretty soon, by the end of his paper route, he would have a song completed.

Of course it was usually a very bad song, but he didn't care. (Click on Norman's picture if you want to see him make a funny face!) Norman didn't know it at the time, but those little melodies he'd make up were nurturing the creative process he'd use to write the songs he would compose later on.

Norman lives in a little house in Richmond, Virginia with two turtles named Ike and Ivan. He likes to garden and grow flowers and vegetables. (Click here to see a nice picture of his garden as reported in the local newspaper.) His favorite flower is the sunflower. Norman believes he was a worm in another life because he loves to get his hands down in the dirt. Norman has been playing in Dog's New Clothes since 1988.

Bringing Down The House

This article appeared in the Washington Post on 6/4/07

Mr. Plumbean painted his home to reflect his dreams. That's fiction. Real life can be a different story.
By Laura Stassi Jeffrey
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, June 4, 2007; C08

Mr. Plumbean lives on a street where all the houses are the same and everyone likes it that way. But when a seagull spills a bucket of orange paint on Mr. Plumbean's roof, he does not remove it. Instead he transforms his house to look like all his dreams. He paints a wild mural on the exterior, plants exotic trees and bushes and hangs a hammock between two palm trees in the front yard.

Mr. Plumbean is the main character in "The Big Orange Splot," a 1970s-era children's picture book by Daniel Manus Pinkwater. The man I think of as Mr. Plumbean is known to others as Norman. Norman also transformed his house to reflect his dreams. He painted stars and moons around the windows, planted a flurry of flowers and constructed a tiki lounge from scavenged bamboo.

In Pinkwater's book, Mr. Plumbean's neighbors are upset because their street is no longer neat. They visit him one by one, sip lemonade under the palm trees and come to understand and accept the change. In fact, they renovate their homes to reflect their own dreams.

But there's no happy ending for my Mr. Plumbean. Norman was driven out of his house -- not by judgmental adults worried about property values but by aimless adolescents. As their neighbor, he was a convenient target.

In a period spanning 20 months, Norman was victimized three times. In each case, the culprits were kids. Twice, his house was burglarized. Then, he was attacked. He was riding his bicycle around the neighborhood one day when a group of kids called out to him. As soon as he pedaled over, they pulled him off the bicycle and beat him. They battered not only his body but also his spirit.

I first met Norman in the early 1990s, when my kids were little and a used paperback copy of "The Big Orange Splot" was a read-aloud favorite. I lived in an old house in Richmond that my architect husband was renovating room by room. He hired out the details he didn't want to diddle with; mudding and taping drywall were two of those. Enter Norman, a self-proclaimed "drywall dude" by day, musician by night and weekend. When we sold that house and bought a bigger fixer-upper a mile or so away, Norman came, too.

He was in his 40s then, with a wiry build and a golden-brown ponytail that hung halfway down his back. During his breaks, we chatted. Norman told me about his own house projects, and I relayed the tales to my husband when he came home from work. "He's Mr. Plumbean," we agreed. I may have mentioned the Pinkwater book to Norman, but I never showed it to him.

Norman's final project for us was completed in the fall of 2003. A few months later, we sold that house and moved more than 100 miles north to the Washington suburbs, into a newly constructed abode with no additional mudding and taping required. I packed "The Big Orange Splot" in a box with other mementos from my kids' early years, and forgot about it.

I put Norman out of my mind, too. I did not even think about him on the day I spotted one copy of "The Big Orange Splot" in a bookstore in Emerald Isle, N.C., where we own a summer rental house. I bought the book and left it at the beach house, thinking our guests might enjoy it.

A few weeks later, we returned to supervise the installation of new carpeting. Perhaps it was the home-improvement project, perhaps it was a moment of heat-induced clairvoyance, but during a five-mile jog along the beach one afternoon, I suddenly thought of Norman. I decided to send him the new copy of "The Big Orange Splot."

I still had his phone number. By plugging that and his full name into an Internet search engine, I found his address. Curious about what else I might find, I Googled him. Through a column posted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch Web site, I learned about the break-ins and the beating. Coincidentally, Norman had been attacked just a few days before I had bought the book.

I sent "The Big Orange Splot" to Norman along with a note, and he wrote back. He told me that, in yet another coincidence, he had received the book the day after he turned 55.

Norman wrote that he was no longer spending much time at his house. "I think I'm about over living here," he said. Instead he was hanging out with his girlfriend, who lived on a neat street in another part of town. Soon, Norman wrote, he would sell the house that once reflected his dreams, and move on.

I found my well-worn copy of "The Big Orange Splot" and shelved it in the old pine armoire that holds our most prized titles. Months later I am not as angry about what happened to Norman. I am not as scared, and I am not as sad.

But I still worry for the kids, the ones who hurt Norman physically and spiritually. I worry they will never have dreams of their own to share, to splash on a house for the whole neighborhood to see.