So ... while reading comments from my last blog (and I do read your comments ... and cherish each one) I came across this one from "ginny" which said:
"I'll be expecting my Cabbage Patch Kid from Woolworth's in the mail."
If you read that and were confused (what the heck does that have to do with dust or jury duty?) I am here to clear that up. If you didn't go back and read my comments, then you are probably ... a normal person.
Here's the story:
In the summer of '82 or '83, I was was the young mother of 3 girls ("ginny" amy gee and mrs. dub) and one boy (sonny-boy). I started out the summer with high hopes of organization and cleanliness. I made the obligatory "chore chart" and I attached a very large, very impossible-to-obtain prize to the other end of the bribe: If they did their chores regularly (made beds, picked up toys, kept all stray Barbie-body-parts out of the couch cushions) then they would receive the most coveted prize of all ... a Cabbage Patch Kid, heretofore known as the CPK. I knew at the moment I told them this, that CPK's were near to impossible to come by, but I didn't worry. Why not? Because the chore chart had been largely ignored to that point in their young lives, that's why.
When they (and by "they" I mean the 3 girls, Sonny Boy was the size of a CPK at the time) got up the next morning and promptly made their beds, I wasn't worried. One week later when the Barbies were fully ambulatory, I started to panic. At this point I knew that the only way to be able to purchase a CPK was to be inside the store at the exact moment the shipment arrived. And at that ... blood would probably need to be spilled.
I put in calls to relatives in several states to be on guard and then proceeded to pray. One unremarkable, hotter-than-hades afternoon, I received a call from PDaddy. He was downtown Phoenix ... on jury duty ... and had gone into a Woolworths at lunch to buy gum, when lo and behold ... the shipment. He was calling to tell me this because he had walked to the Woolworths and he needed me to meet him on the street corner ... STAT ... before his lunch hour was up. I told the girls, who immediately started sobbing as we buckled ourselves into the car and sped off at the speed of light. At the first stop-light I looked down and realized I had no gas. Prayer to the rescue once again. The girls continued to sob while Sonny Boy innocently played with a toy, not realizing that his status as "most fun play thing in the house" was about to go up in smoke.
When we got downtown, there was poor PDaddy holding not one, not two, but three of the gargantuan boxes that held our new grandchildren. He threw them into the car (I believe some injuries were sustained from the sharp corners) and literally sprinted back to the courtroom. How the girls managed to open those boxes is still a mystery, but before long each double-named doll was eternally bonded with her mother and life would never be the same again. (Help me out with the names here girls ... I know that two of them had the first name "Naomi".) Once the dolls were easier to come by, a few more joined the family, but none held places of honor like those first three.
So ... that's what Cabbage Patch Kids, Woolworths and Jury Duty have in common. (I know it was bugging you.)
What's your CPK story?
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