Amazing what first class postage will do!

When we received our new camera about 2 weeks ago, its box was wrapped in a sheet of bubble wrap – the kind with really big bubbles – and ensconced in a much larger box for shipping. The Papaya was fascinated and enchanted. “May-wee will weally like this,” he said. (Merry is his cousin who had just completed a visit with us.) “No, no, no, Mommy – don’t pop it yet! Save it for May-wee. She will be weally happy to get it. She will get it and she will say, ‘Thank you for the poppie-things, Josiah!’ And I will say, ‘You’re welcome!’”

I told the Papaya that we would save it until we went to the beach house in August and saw Merry there. He considered this possibility for a few minutes, then decided that August was much too far away. The following is his monologue (repeated several times since), punctuated with occasional affirmations from me:

PAPAYA: No, no, no, Mommy. We won’t wait until the beach. We will send the poppie-things to May-wee in the mail. We will take them to the post office and we will give them to the lady there and she will get on an airplane and go to May-wee’s house in Pennsylvania and wing the doorbell and give them to May-wee and May-wee will be SO excited and happy for the poppie-things. [I guess my previous explanation of how the US Postal System worked left out some important details.] We will put the poppie-things in a box and we will use lots of tape and be ve-wee careful to make sure that they don’t break. [The first time I’ve ever heard of anybody going to extra lengths to protect bubble wrap in the mail.] Come on, Mommy, we will go wight now!

The Papaya put the bubble tape into the large outer box that held the camera, closed the top flaps, and put on a single piece of Scotch tape. Then he found his shoes and went to garage door. “I’m weady to go to the post office now, Mommy!” Happily, the post office was already closed for the day, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend good money to fly bubble wrap across the continent. I put the bubble wrap on top of the refrigerator and told the Papaya that the post office was closed and we would think about sending it later – hoping, of course, that his ardor would have diminished by the next morning.

I was wrong. Every box that the Papaya’s gotten ahold of over the last two weeks, he’s filled with the bubble wrap (he pulls a stepstool up to the refrigerator to retrieve it), taped up with Scotch tape, and tried to take to the post office. I’ve held him off by telling him that the boxes were much too big to mail (very true), but he hasn’t forgotten. I even tried to get him interested in popping the bubble wrap himself, but this got him very upset (“No, no, NO, Mommy – those are May-wee’s poppie-things!”). We ordered a birthday present for Merry’s mommy on-line (to be delivered to her house) and told the Papaya that the poppie-things that came with her birthday present would be for Merry. But that didn’t seem to really satisfy him for long.

Finally this morning, when the Papaya tried to lug a very large Pampers Cruisers box, covered with long pieces of Scotch tape, to the garage door to go to the post office, I gave in to the inevitable. I located a modestly sized box, and the Papaya wrapped up the bubble wrap (not in a sock) and affixed a tag to it indicating that it was for Merry. We then took a walk through the house and found a couple other things to include with the package, because it really did seem wrong to mail just bubble wrap to Pennsylvania (maybe I simply have too little imagination). And we took the box to the post office, handed it over to Sonya, our postmistress, and asked for Priority Mail.

So tonight the Papaya can dream of Sonya on an airplane bound for Pittsburgh, precious bubblewrap in hand, ready to deliver it into the hands of a delighted Merry. Enjoy the poppie-things, Merry!