George

At this time, it is important that we leave our current narrative to talk about George.

George is a stuffed spider, about 6 inches across, black and furry. Not furry in the traditional sense of furry, but in a nubbly, somewhat realistic black widow sense. He's a very disturbing combination of cute and too realistic and he's Firstborn's favorite pet.

I purchased George along with 23 other Georges from Oriental Trading Co because I was holding our babysitting cooperative's annual Halloween party and I like to have something for the kids to take home. What better than a spider?

I also passed one on to Firstborns favorite classmate as part of a birthday gift at the end of September. The friend loved the spider and named him Fred. So, therefore, Firstborn must like his spider too. He carried him to school and the two boys played with their spiders at recess. Until one day, George fell from Firstborn's pocket.

Now George has a new home or was run over so many times by suburban mini-vans that he is an unrecognizable mass of black fabric on the school playground. We may never know.

Firstborn was heartbroken. He often talked of how much he missed George. One day, while driving home from school with both boys, Firstborn was lamenting the loss of his arachnid friend when Lastborn offered to give up his spider. After all, it was just sitting in the bottom of the toy box. Firstborn sensed a trick and began the questioning process that would uncover the ill will. But there was none. In fact, Lastborn offered to draw Firstborn a new spider if said spider couldn't be found in the bottom of the toybox.

Yes, my heart swelled with pride over the selfless act. And Firstborn was almost pacified.

He named his new friend George too. Not George Two. Just George. No differentiation in the names, but let's be clear, it's not the same George and Firstborn hopes to be reunited with the original George in the future.

This George would have a better life. He would be better cared for and he wasn't going to accompany Firstborn to school. Instead, he would live a protected life that no other stuffed spider had ever lived.

To begin with, Firstborn set up a bed, a ceramic dish he had painted over the summer to hold some of his precious gems. No longer a tray for gems, it would now be George's bed. Along with the bed a soft pencil grip as a pillow, and firstborn's very own blanket. Well, what 's left of it.

You see, Firstborn developed an odd attachment to a certain cotton jersey receiving blanket handed down by his Aunt to him when he was a baby. The white blanket sported a butterfly of flowered material appliqued onto the corner of the blanket.

Once Firstborn was beyond the need of a comforting object, the blanket became a superhero cape, worn around the neck at all times. The blanket/cape gave him the power to fly especially when the breeze in the yard was just right. It gave him the power to leap off of furniture in a single bound. It gave him the power to finish his chicken nuggets.

But it was a hard life for a blanket and eventually, it developed a run in the fabric near the butterfly. The fabric began to disintegrate. I sewed the butterfly back into what was left of the blanket a few times until there just wasn't any blanket left. Firstborn was so heartbroken that we made a deal to keep the butterfly in case we could sew it onto another blanket some day.

That butterfly is now the blanket that Firstborn places on George every night when he puts him to bed in his ceramic dish, with his spider head resting on the pencil grip pillow.

Do you think we have to put a stocking up on the mantel for George?