I have lived with this family for about six years previously proudly displayed like the pink, lidded trophy I was at Roots where sales staff went to great lengths to ensure my beak was stacked in perfect alignment with others cut from the same cloth.
Enter the proud mother of a young red headed girl who took me home to protect her freckles from the sun’s harmful rays. From that day forward, I have been treated like crown garbage.
In retrospect, the oldest daughter treated me like a shrine compared to this new one. At nineteen months she has stomped on me more times than I care to remember, tossed me on the mall floor and left me for dead.
Dear Diary—Today Chloe drew on me with washable markers. I knew it would come off it’s the disrespect that irks me and the impending whirl around the soapy washing machine isn’t exactly appealing.
Dear Diary—Today Chloe tossed me out of the stroller, twice. The first time the dirty wheels drove over me leaving brown treads in a criss-cross pattern like I was a piece of grilled chicken. The second time, her oblivious mother didn’t notice I was missing until they were three houses away because she was busy praising the baby for saying “chirps” every time she saw a bird. How about we praise her for calling them “birds” and focus on the hat on the side of the road about to be carried away by a colony of red ants!
Dear Diary—Chloe spilled her mother’s hot tea all over my lid. Yes it scorched but it’s not the scar I’m worried about, it’s the stain. At best, it will drain some of the pale pink colour that has lasted the better part of six years and I’ll be humiliated if there’s ever a hat-trick toss.
Dear Diary—Chloe refused to wear me on a walk today. Her mother likes to force me over her head quickly which makes Chloe angry so of course out of frustration she’s going to yank me off, walk with me in her hand while whipping her arm back and forth trying to hike up the slightest of inclines that her mother treats as high altitude training, chiming to the neighbours about how this bit of exercise will help her nap while some of us get whiplash.
Dear Diary—Chloe rips me off her head because her bulbous cranium is growing and she’s finding me uncomfortable. How does she think I feel being stretched like that?
Dear Diary—Today Chloe’s mom stopped just shy of a neighbouring house to point out a woman wearing a nice, wide brimmed hat while in her garden in an attempt to give me a complex about the size of my brim. The hat was a home crafting project gone awry with what appeared to be colourful Bingo chips glued around the ball. I’m not here to judge, maybe brimming with envy. A hat is a hat and it helps our industry to continue to promote them. Besides, if I’m going to judge anything it’s the two toilets sitting in plain sight in the backyard.
Dear Diary—Yesterday Chloe left me in the yard overnight. When her mother removed me to be replaced by that hard hat they call a bike helmet I was once again tossed and forgotten. The family is trying to decipher what kind of “hair” has been stuck in bunches all around me. It’s not hair, it is fur. They’ll never guess an angry pack of wolves used me to cart around a cub and wrote baby Wolfy’s name in urine on the tag so it could later be claimed in the lost and found.
I hope for the sake of all involved, they stop at three kids…..but that’s just one lids opinion.
