Why I should have listened to my mom

My mom never let us have Play-Doh. It was one if the great disappointments of my young life. (I also never had an EZ-Bake oven, a sock monkey, or a pogo stick. All of which many of my friends had--I usually tried to go to their houses when we played. On the up side, I did have a massive backyard, a jungle gym--truly fabulous, made by my dad one Christmas Eve--and a really smokin' balcony from which to throw paper airplanes. Later on we had a stage. It all evens out.) Mom gave various reasons for the no Doh rule: it ruined carpets, she knew we would forget to put the lids on and let it dry out, it was expensive, the smell drove her nuts. (Side note: did you know there's a Play-Doh perfume??????? Who wants to smell like a pre-school? Is it supposed to be alluring? Does it only attract men with Peter Pan complexes? These are vital questions the perfume industry needs to answer!) It was Banned Substance Number One for us.

We tried to be sneaky, as sneaky as children with limited grasps of deviousness can be--no Play-Doh, but salt dough (usually provided by sympathetic Primary teachers), or modeling clay (a less-effective stab at slipping past the rules through playing the fine arts card. Mom knew we had not a stitch of sculpting talent. I think the 21 failed attempts to make a snake were clues). Those were soon included on the Not In My House list. The only place we could play with the forbidden substances was my great-grandma Johnson's house. She had a massive stash of the stuff and all the accessories. She usually urged us to eat cookies while we played with it--and she never got frustrated when we mixed the colors. There's a reason they call them GREAT-grandmas.

After twenty or so years of begrudging my fate I grew up--deprived childhood notwithstanding, and became a mostly normal, only slightly neurotic mom myself. (The adjectives refer solely to me, not my mom, who was not neurotic, just a little stressy when company came over. I take full responsibility for my own psychological dilemmas.) My children brought home Play-Doh from Halloween trick-or-treating and various birthday parties. This, I was sure, was the end of the destructive cycle. Play-Doh would be allowed, the deprivation would end, and joy and happiness would reign forever.

Apparently, my mom was on to something all those years ago. In spite of my best intentions I hate the stuff. It ruins not only carpets but tile, laminate, and wood floors. It gets smushed into sheets and rugs. The dog is strangely--is there any other way with this pooch?--attracted to it, and Play-Doh colored dog vomit is not my favorite thing to discover while walking in bare feet at three in the morning. The lids are always left off, and the stuff dries out in milliseconds. It gets stuck in the crack down the center of the kitchen table. It makes my house smell funny. It is now a banned substance indoors. The kids have it--but under no circumstances it is to come through the patio door--UNDER PAIN OF DOOM!!! (I'm now committed to breaking only half of the destructive cycle. The kids can take care of the other half when they grow up. I'm hoping that the Millennium will have arrived by then, and surely when all things become terrestrialized Play-Doh will be less horrible. Or maybe it will go the way of all sinfulness, and cease to exist. Either way, I'd be happy.)

But the biggest problem with Play-Doh is one we discovered last week. (It traumatized me so deeply I couldn't write about it for seven days. That's pretty bad. Even kidney stones didn't get a seven-day blog delay.)

Lindy woke up in the middle of the night last Wednesday/Thursday. That itself is nothing new, and cannot be ascribed to Play-Doh, unfortunately; imnia is another destructive cycle destined to be passed on to other generations. What was unusual was that she was crying that her Play-Doh had gotten stuck in her hair. (See, kids? When you break the rules, bad things happen. Another example of natural consequences at work.) It was 2 a.m. I was barely coherent, and Play-Doh-encrusted hair barely registered on my sleep-deprived brain. She climbed into bed with us, fell back to sleep, and I zonked out again without worrying about the root cause of her mid-night trauma. (No blood/no vomit=mom goes back to sleep.)

The next morning was another story. Brushing her hair was more frustrating than usual--and it typically requires threats during the process and treats afterward to get us through it. No matter what I did, the horrible knots in her hair would not come out. They were large, matted, and grayish. That was what tipped me off. Gray hair on a four-year-old is usually a sign that something is awry.

Curses on the inventor of Play-Doh. May he/she/it writhe in agony throughout eternity. I'm pretty sure there's something about the final fate of him/her/it in D&C 76. All will receive a kingdom of some glory, except the sons of perdition and the inventor of childhood's most heinous clay-like product.

I tried to get the stuff out. I combed; I greased; I briefly contemplated the efficacy of peanut butter. I plead for higher wisdom from the Internet. No luck. I finally took the only path left.

Last week, Lindy looked like this:

Smiles, glee, and educational activity.

This week, she's sporting a new 'do:

Distress, grief, and inactivity while mom wails and takes pictures.

Play-Doh: proof that the devil exists.