His Dogness

Every now and then, you get a bag of perfect chips.

That happened to me this week. At the grocery store, I picked that particular bag of tortilla chips because, through the clear part of the bag, it looked as if all the chips were intact.

We all know, though, how unreliable the clear part of the package is an indicator. You examine the clear section on the back on several packages of bacon, pick the one that looks best, take it home and open it only to feel like a chump.

But what else are you going to do?

And sometimes you do luck out. As I did this time. One chip after another came out of the bag round and whole. This came in handy when I had Doobins. Left to his own devices, Doobins would happily live on milk. In his mind, there are two types of milk – “Ovaltine milk” and “white milk.”

Ovaltine milk usually gets the first vote. But white milk is a satisfactory fallback option if his mother says no to that. Some days, getting him to eat regular food can be a challenge. I keep track of any regular food that he eats under my watch and report back. Positive news on the food front bucks her up.

With one whole tortilla after another coming out of the bag, I would be able to be quite precise – “He ate eight tortilla chips on the way over to the video store.”

Doobins and I had gone to the video story to pick up “The Wizard of Oz” for Sparkle Girl. It had been a good while since she had seen it. She was ready for a refresher. In the Family/Kids section, it came to Doobins that a Thomas the Tank Engine video would be in order as well.

He picked up the illustrated box that the video had originally come in but that now served only for display. I picked up the plain box behind it that actually had the video in it. A discussion ensued. He could not understand why on earth I was insisting on getting the “clearly of no interest” plain box when the “look, there’s Thomas right there on the cover” box was ours for the taking.

At the checkout, I said to the young man helping us, “He doesn’t believe that I’m really getting the Thomas video.”

Doobins crossed his arms and turned away from us. The young man took out the security strip that prevented the box from being opened and opened it to reveal Thomas right there on the DVD.

“Look, here’s Thomas,” the young man said.

Doobins refused to look.

“Thomas,” the young man said.

Doobins peeked over this shoulders. His eyes grew wide. How about that!

“For a minute there, I didn’t think he was going to look,” the young man said.

Back in the car, there was a delay. No way was Doobins going to climb back into a child seat peppered with tortilla-chip crumbs. Doobins is quite fastidious. When he falls, it’s usually not injuries that trouble him but any dirt that may have attached itself to him. Dust him off, and he’s ready to go.

We cleaned out all the crumbs, including a few that I wouldn’t have noticed on my own, and he climbed in.

On the way to his house, I thought about the video boxes. If I hadn’t known better, I, too, would have thought that the colorfully illustrated one was the way to go. It made me think about the challenges that humans present to God.

God: “I’m telling you, this box has something of substance for you in it.”

Human: “Surely, You jest. This other box has so many bright colors. I think I’ll pick that one.”

When I reported back to Doobins’ mother that he had eaten eight tortilla chips, she said that he had eaten well all day.

So, when he said, “I want Ovaltine milk,” he didn’t have to settle for white milk.