Work-Work and Dumb-Dumb – My Childhood Dolls

Age 2: Adorable, yet easily annoyed

I think you can probably tell a LOT about a person by what they named their dolls when they were very, very small children.  Or rather, what their mother named their dolls when they were very, very small children, in an effort to keep their adorable, yet easily annoyed daughter from calling stranger people “Dumb-Dumb”.

If you know me at all, you know that I am not one to disguise my emotions and opinions very well, plus I am easily annoyed.  At stupidity.  Now - I am aware that this cavalier attitude is shallow and will not win me over any life-long friends (let alone lovers), and I have, for the most part, reigned in my desire to call your casual dumb-ass a dumb-ass.  I mean, I still do it under my breath, but if nobody hears me, what’s the harm right?!?

My almost 12-year old son has started letting me know, usually when I have just finished barking my busy-body commands at him that perhaps my tone is a wee bit “off".  And I appreciate him reminding me of this (after that ripple of wanting to box him in the ears passes), because I understand completely and fully that it’s often “not what you say, but how you say it.”  And even if I do think somebody is a complete dumb-ass and I don’t SAY IN WORDS that I think they are a complete dumb-ass, well, my tone is saying it for me.  And that really has to change.  Because as much as I love my own company and (Self) Date Night ™ is really swell,  I really do want that someone special in my life to cozy up on.  But change is difficult, especially with a behavior and an attitude that is nearly a half-century old!

Anyway, at around the same age that photo was taken, and when i began talking, I had a nasty habit of calling most people I met “Dumb–Dumb.”  My mother thought she would solve this little problem by making me a doll and naming the doll Dumb-Dumb.  She then instructed me that I was now to call this DOLL Dumb-Dumb and nobody else Dumb-Dumb because, well, "...because people aren’t dumb-dumbs."  When I looked at her as if SHE were a dumb-dumb, she added something like "...and it's not a nice thing to call people, Maureen."  Fair enough.  I took to my new doll Dumb-Dumb (who, by the way did not have a face) like a pig takes to slop, and played with her, and called her by her name, and soon realized that Dumb-Dumb was super lonely and needed a companion.  So my mother made a companion doll that I got to name.  And I named him “Work-Work.”  We will save further analysis of why Dumb-Dumb was a girl and Work-Work was a boy for another blog. 

"WORK-WORK"

For 40 or so years, I have wondered why in the HELL a three-year-old child would name a doll Work-Work.  There was of course, the traditional male/female programming at play in my childhood home; my father went away to "work" and my mother stayed at home to care for the three children.  But I was two, maybe three years old - it was more than just my short history with this family.  And then I remember: it's who I am.  And what I do.  I am a worker bee.  I work.  Or should I say, “I werk!” No, I just work.  I always have worked, and I probably always WILL work, and I think there is something about the idea of work that, for some god-forsaken reason, gives me a warm, tingly feeling inside.  I am just highly industrious.  A few years ago, I got all excited about a compilation of old videos of our family (and extended family, mostly) my mom had put together from the 1970’s.  I think there was one scene with me in it.  I was about 2 1/2 years old, carrying a HUGE watering can and tending to the house plants. 

One of the things that has come up a lot for me lately is the absolute necessity of self-care, both of my adult self, as well as of that industrious little girl, who just LOVES to work.  I know that we are spoon-fed all sorts of crap about how we are not supposed to like work…how we are actually supposed to HATE work, so that once we get off work, we use what little “play-time” we have to do “non-work” things, like consume.  So then we have to work more.  And play less.

I think this is a load of horseshit.  There is nothing wrong with a little (or a lot) of work.  Especially when it is work that you LOVE doing and work that produces awesome results.  The very idea that the way we spend most of our waking hours should be engaged in something we loathe is ludicrous.  Not to mention - the idea we should all be hating work only serves to increase any aversion one already has to work (which for most of us is a lot), which is then numbed out during one’s play-time by “stuff”: substances, entertainment, stuff, distractions, stuff.  

The other day as I was lamenting over something or another, something that I was "not supposed to be doing” because I had "so many other things that I should be doing,” (meanwhile doing nothing) I ponder my inner child and wonder if she is the source of this most recent wave of ennui.  She replied quickly: “Sister, it’s not me, it's that fat bald dude in the corner over there who just wants to watch one more episode of  'Pimp My Ride' (or whatever).  Go get the watering can, b*tch!  I wanna do me some work!"

Anyway, the point is, I realized, for the VERY FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, my inner child is not the whining, crying, needy little orphan-child I have pictured her to be, one I need to take gently and lovingly into my arms and rock back and forth, letting her know that everything is going to be OK. At least not always. 

Nope.  My inner child needs for me to step aside and allow her to embody the badass, bossy busy-body she has always been.  Sure, I need to slow her down and re-direct her from time to time, but I do think this new little nugget of wisdom, that perhaps I need to care for my inner child in a completely different way, might allow me/her to open up just enough creative space to break on through to the other side of what it means to fully embody my greatest gifts and talents - and share them with more people.  

Or - I was just a bossy little girl, and will die an old, bitter spinster-maid, with Work-Work by my side.  And Work-Work is not real. So that is really super sad.