Pacifier...

My wife found her hiding behind the overstuffed olive colored chair in our living room.  The perfect cover for a four year old not wanting to be caught with her passy.  Now how she came across this passy is still not clear to us.  We’ve not had a passy in our house for nearly two years.  Annsley was a sucker (pun intended) for a pacifier.

Ever since she was able, she had a pacifier firmly in place and was to never be without it.  Pamela and I thought we’d never break her from her pacifier.  We pictured her graduating from college diploma in hand, passy in mouth, waving to her family that was trying not to be noticed to be related to the passy sucking graduate.  But through persistence and much bribery our little Annsley was broken from sucking a passy by the age of almost four.  Not bad, right?

Her dependence upon her pacifier was so much that I had to drive to Wal-Mart at eleven o’clock at night to buy a new one, and it had to match perfectly, when hers was lost; something I swore I would never do (Father, please forgive for I have sinned).  Once she had been broken of her dependence on taking a pacifier, we burned those wretches (threw them in the trash actually) in the style of spinning wheels being burned in “Sleeping Beauty.”  However, like “Sleeping Beauty,” there was one lone spinning wheel, I mean passy, that was forgotten about.  And when Annsley found the passy the other day she again didn’t want to give it up.  Her mother argued with her reminding her that she was a big girl now and didn’t need a passy any longer.  Annsley argued back that she was a big girl who needed a passy.  Her mom shot back that when her daddy got home he would be mad that she was not his big girl any more since she was sucking a passy (a low blow I thought).  But persistent, Annsley shot back that she could have it until her daddy got home.  Touché. She takes after me…

But God invented mothers and put a brain inside their heads.  “Mother” was the version 2.0 of “father” and the brain was the upgrade that we fathers didn’t get.  In a stroke of pure brilliance, my brain-headed-wife suggested that Annsley give her passy to a baby that really needs a passy.  It was a bit manipulative given the fact that we’ve been teaching our children there are kids in the world who have nothing and we need to learn to share our blessings with them.  And in the style of a slick televangelist, Pamela pleaded with Annsley shedding a tear and using the TBN tactic of “just sow your passy-seed right now and God will pour blessings of big girl stuff upon you.”  Pamela then showed Annsley pictures of all the passy starved children living in the Sudan.  At this, I suggested that Pamela stop watching TBN.  But she was able to convince Annsley to “mail” her passy to a baby girl that needed a passy. (I also then forbid Annsley to ever watch televangelists as well.  She was too susceptible to the manipulation.) So together mother and big girl found an envelope, placed the pink passy into the envelope and she helped Annsley write a letter to “Babies”.  The envelope was addressed “To Babies” and the letter said,

“Please give this passy to a baby girl who loves pink,” (her words) signed Annsley.

So mommy and big girl walked to the mailbox dropped in the letter and walked back to the house for fresh big girl cupcakes (also part of the bribe… or God’s blessings, I can’t remember which).

And do you really have to ask?  Of course when I got home from work I checked the mail, secured the contents secretly under my shirt and then placed the envelope, the letter and the pink passy in the top of our closet.  I just wanted to be sure that when my little big girl was old enough to move off to college, that she could find it in the top of our closet so she would have the passy for her college graduation day.