Does your kid have special things? A duck? A blanket? An infinitesimally miniscule bracelet that is of mind-boggling importance to her little preschool world?
Sometimes, when you’re visiting Daddy at the maze of a complex that we call MEGACORP for a reason and you can barely find your car again when it’s time to leave, does your daughter REPEATEDLY drop her prized one-of-a-kind beaded bracelet from Grammy and Papa that they bought at the Zoo store because they are the only adults in this family kind enough to take the kids inside the Zoo store and actually spend $4,000,000 buying a life altering trinket? Mine does.
When she drops the bracelet on the 3 mile walk through corridors, up and down stairs and around the cafeteria, does she suddenly make a sheepish face and say, “Uh-Oh! My bracelet’s gone again. We NEED to find it?” Mine does.
When this happens for the third time and Daddy goes back to search for the bracelet while you wait in the car with the sniffling child, only to discover it’s right next to her on the seat, do you secretly want to dispose of the bracelet in a sinister display of parental pyrotechnic power? I do.
I was thinking about it today and I decided that with all the crying my kids have done in their lives over lost treasured items, we could provide much-needed rainfall to a mid-sized African country. Now as cool as it would be to have a cistern in Ghana named after Laylee and Magoo, I’d really rather just stop the madness.
If I gathered up every toy, scrap of crumpled paper, gold fish cracker and sippy cup that they CanNotLiveWITHOUT, even the ones that they don’t yet know that they CanNotLiveWITHOUT but that they will discover that they CanNotLiveWITHOUT the minute they’re missing, stacked them all on the bamboo pile out back and lit a match, they would probably cry. And scream. And bonk their heads on the ground while screaming, “Why, oh WHY?!!! I NEEEEED that!!!! Erp. Angelina Jolie please adopt me now and save me from this heartless mother who never drives back to the mall to search for the precious rubber band I was saving in my shoe that my she told me 10 times to leave in the car because I’d probably lose it and halfway home I noticed it was MISSING and did I mention she wouldn’t go back for it??!!!!” Once.
They would have the fit once and then in would be over. All the special things would be gone and they wouldn’t have anything left to lose or whine about or make me feel guilty over my callous disregard for EVER AGAIN… until I gave them an apple to eat… and they discovered a seed inside it… THAT COULD BE USED TO PLANT AN APPLE TREE IN THE BACK YARD after being carried to preschool and back and across 12 or 13 continents until they noticed it had fallen out of their pocket somewhere between Minsk and Oshawa.
But at least when they asked about the seed, I could tell them, “Don’t you remember? I’m pretty sure it was lost in ”˜the fire’.”
