CHAIRMAN AND SPECIAL

Dear Spike:

When we named your stuffed cat "Chairman Meow" we thought we were being quite clever. Turns out that the word for "cat" in Mandarin is "mao," (or so you tell me) so we could have named the little furry feline "Chairman Mao" and been just as savvy and ironic.

It wouldn't likely change the way you feel about him, which is to say that he's pretty much your best inanimate friend in the world — except for maybe your favorite blanket, a sea green knitted throw you've taken to calling "Special."

You go pretty much everywhere with Chairman and Special. And you won't go to sleep without them. Not without a fight, at least.

Which is why I am, at this moment, sitting on the folding table of the laundry room in the oh-so-posh Desert Inn Hotel, across the street from Disneyland, while you, just upstairs, are fighting sleep like a death row inmate being dragged down the green mile.

In retrospect — goodness, I say that a lot these days — we may have played up this Disney adventure a little too much. We've been talking about it since your birthday, nearly a month ago. And each day of this long trip, we've reminded you that your impeccable behavior would be rewarded with a visit to the Happiest Place on Earth.

Hell, we might as well have called it Mickey Mecca.

You didn't get much of a nap today after playing on the beach with your new friends in San Clemente (turns out you like the ocean after all, but that's another happy story.) So when it came time to put you down to bed, tonight, we thought for sure you'd fall fast asleep, visions of Tinkerbell dancing in your head.

As it turns out, though, you were a little too excited to slumber. In fact, you were pretty much bouncing off the hotel's wall paper.

But you were tired.

So you were a little upset.

And then upset turned into cranky.

And then cranky turned into sick.

And then you puked macaroni noodles all over the hotel bed.

And all over on Chairman.

And all over Special.

It fell to me to find a laundromat — and luckily there was one just downstairs from our room — to clean all that up.

But I've got the easy job. I really don't envy your mother, who at this moment is sitting at your bedside trying to keep you calm so that — in 31 minutes when this drier has run through my buck-fifty and I appear heroically at the foot of your bed holding your freshly-washed friends — you don't respond by puking all over your best buddies again.

If all goes well, though, you'll be curled up with Chairman and Special very soon.

And in any case, I've learned my lesson. I'm not saying the "D-word" again until we're walking down Main Street, U.S.A.

Love,
dad