Old Baby

August 15, 2016

In the process of getting a big girl bed and reorganizing her room, Charlotte found this baby in a tub.  this old baby was a Thumbelina doll probaby bought in1960.  One of Snappy's earliest memories is a story of a favorite doll.  The memory of the day is very clear (despite Papa's version of the story to be told later)

It was a warm Oklahoma day and my mom was going to the store.  I wanted to take my doll along and she told me that I had to keep up with it myself.  We parked our green car right outside the store and started shopping.  Before too long, I decided I no longer wanted to keep the doll so I was instructed to go put it in the car.  I ran out the door and tossed it into the window left open to keep the car from being so hot (before needing to always lock your car)  We finished shopping and got ready to go and discovered no babydoll in the car.  I remember Mom going back in to talk to the store manager.  She was pretty sure I threw in in the wrong car.  Maybe she had not left the windows open or had some other adult clue that I don't remember that led her to know that is what happened.  I was distraught.  REALLY distraught.  The long and short of it was that I was eventually taken to a store to buy a new doll - a Thumbelina.  (Maybe the original was one; not sure.)  I loved that baby.  I named her Lisa and she was my favorite baby.  

Fast forward to around 1986 and Emily Anne discovered Lisa and from that moment she was HER favorite baby.  Only she named "him" Joel and we had to go buy some little boy baby clothes for him.  Maybe she was practicing to be a mommy to little boys.  In 2016, Lisa Joel has been renamed "old baby."  She has almost no hair, a body with stuffing falling out but the night she found him, Charlotte insisted on keeping him with her and told her mom, "I just love this old baby."  Three generations loving one old baby.

Now for the Papa story:  The girls heard many times about Snappy losing her doll by throwing her through the wrong car window.  One night when they were little Papa started the nightly bedtime story and it went something like this.  One day he was at the grocery store  with his mom but he got so bored that he went out and laid down in the back seat (cue the part about how you could do those things by yourself back in the day without your parents being reported to the police) Anyway, he lay there snoozing away with the windows open to keep cool and suddenly, WHAM!  He was hit in the head by a babydoll thrown through the window.  He jumped up and saw a little blackhaired girl running away.  He never knew who threw that baby doll.  Oh those girls were blown away!  They screamed and came running to tell me the story.  This was one of their first realizations that they better take Papa's stories with a grain of salt.

P.s. January 2017
Here are a couple of pics of Old Baby cleaned up a bit, new body cloth and clean clothes.  We are still debating about replacing the hair.  Charlotte says yes.  Emily says "no! I loved him like that and she needs to love him that way too!"  We shall see....