Dad 32     Travis 2     Drew (not around yet)

Baby was missing!

Cheryl called me at work and said she and Travis couldn’t find his “Baby.” She was in tears and I was close. “Baby” wasn’t just any doll; he was a member of the family. He had slept in the arms of our son for a year and a half. He had his own falsetto voice (courtesy of Cheryl or Travis or me). He had spent an hour and a half in a Sears shoe department in Key West, waiting for us to discover him missing and drive the 25 miles back to pick him up. He had taken, at a very young age, a dip in the toilet, accounting for his spiked hairdo. He could ask Travis to do something and Travis would comply, when Mommy’s or Daddy’s requests would go unheeded.

And now he was lost. Trav had had him in the morning and had wanted to take him running errands with them. Now it was 11:00 a.m., after errands, and Baby was nowhere to be found. I left work to go help hunt. We searched the house. We retraced their steps. We asked at the bank. Could someone have stolen Baby? Who would steal Baby? He wasn’t exactly an attractive doll. The best we could figure was that Cheryl, while she loaded Travis into his car seat, had put Baby on the roof of the car, to fall off as they got going. Several passes over the streets yielded no Baby.

Travis didn’t seem too upset about it, but Cheryl and I were crushed. The only thing I could think to do was to put up a sign in the neighborhood, in hopes that whoever had found Baby hadn’t thrown him away. We drew four, full-color posters of Baby, with the message, “Have you found my son’s doll? Call 836-0845.” I placed the signs hopefully at well-traveled intersections near our home.

A week passed without any word. The faded signs mimicked our hopes. Travis talked less and less about Baby, but a sadness hung over us grown-ups. A trip to a few toy stores was unfruitful.

It was time to get serious. Remembering that Baby had been a Fisher-Price product, I called the local Toys-R-Us and learned the Fisher-Price headquarters address. A call to the East Aurora, New York directory assistance fetched the Fisher-Price number, and I was getting excited.

Mr. Harmon at Fisher-Price told me of their Consumer Affairs 800 number. At that number, Ms. Jean Tim was just the friendly, helpful voice I needed. I described Baby to her. She knew just the doll: “That’s ‘Joey,’ one of the lapsitter dolls. Dark hair, plastic hands . . . .” I had to stop her right there. I knew that Baby had cloth hands and feet. I assured her I was positive. You don’t tote your child’s favorite toy around for 18 months, on airplanes, moving across country, without acquiring a good image of it.

But Ms. Tim was patient. Finally something jogged her memory. She looked in another catalog and found Baby.

Baby was “a #240 My Pal Mikey” [Hooray!], “out of production since 1981” [Argh!]. My heart leapt and crashed in one sentence. But Ms. Tim was resourceful. She said she could call “Back Stock” and see if they had any more #240 My Pal Mikeys. Failing there, she could call “Close Out” for the names of companies that had bought some Mikeys.

Ms. Tim called Monday and said there were no more Mikeys in stock. But she gave me the names of the last three companies to have bought Mikeys. I wanted very much to kiss Ms. Tim, and told her so.

KayBee Toy and Hobby, in Lee, Massachusetts, was a strike out, and I began to think that this whole hunt was silly and doomed from the start.

My next call was to Toy City in Anaheim. There I found a helpful, sympathetic manager in Annie. I gave her the description of Baby, told her his Fisher-Price alias, and she said, “Sure, we have some on aisle 4.”

There’s this moment, in certain events, when you’re afraid you’ll “blow it.” You make a long run for a fly ball in the outfield, and you have very little to lose, as no one really expects you to get there. But then you find that you’re going to get there in time after all. Only then do you feel the pressure. Wouldn’t it be a shame to blow it now? You concentrate harder, in hopes of overcoming the effects of choke thoughts.

“Annie, this is very important to me. Could you possibly, please, go get one and set it aside for me”? Annie said that that would be no problem. I guessed that Annie and Ms. Tim were both parents. She got the doll and described it to me over the phone. So, as I sat there talking on the phone, a “Baby,” a clean, well-groomed “Baby,” stood on a desk 1700 miles to the west.

But I had a friend who lived in Anaheim Hills, and he had a little boy, so would understand. Annie set Baby aside with my name on the box.

Now we told Travis that Baby was on vacation in California. Later that night Travis heard Charlie Brown say on TV that Snoopy’s brother, Spike, lived in Needles, California. Trav said, “California, that’s where my Baby is on vacation.”

A week later we received the package in the mail. Travis was napping as we took the #240 My Pal Mikey out of the box. And it was Baby.

When Travis woke up we told him that someone was home, and presented the new Baby to him. “Baby, you got a haircut,” were his first words. As they got reacquainted, Travis asking him about his vacation, Cheryl and I agreed on a new rule: Baby doesn’t leave the house.