The last 'dummy' in the house

The little 'un goes to big boys' school in September but he still has a dummy - or a 'doddy' as it's known in our family. It should have gone long ago (we have nightmare visions of him still having it when he's doing his A-levels and bringing girls home) but it's been proving devilishly hard to get him to give it up.

In the dim, distant, and gloriously simple days before children, we'd vowed never to have anything to do with dummies - horrible things for lazy parents, we thought. But at three in the morning, you'll do anything for an hour's sleep and our principles were quickly sucked dry.

Eleven years of parenthood later, dummies have almost served their purpose in our house, except for our youngest's determination to hang on to his very last one as long as possible. He loses an average of three a week and Mum had told him she wouldn't be buying any more. That was it - finito! She'd also launched a 'star chart' to help him give up the habit. If he managed without his dummy during the day, and only had it at night, he'd get a star. Once he'd filled his chart, he'd get a new Thomas (still pronounced "Tosser") The Tank Engine toy.

Unbeknown to me, this had been going on for a week when we settled down in front of the TV on Sunday night, with supper on lap trays and the kids supposedly tucked up in bed. Jack, seven, and Hannah, nine, appeared at the lounge door, giggling like mad. "You'll never guess - Max has dropped his dummy down the toilet while he was having a poo," chuckled Jack.

I know it's unpalatable but, hey, this is real life. Mum gave me one of her unmistakable "it's your turn" looks and I went upstairs to investigate. There was the dummy, floating in the... er... toilet. So, instinctively, I flushed it away.

Imagine the look on someone's face if they'd just won the Lottery and had their winning ticket blown away by a sudden gust of wind. That was the look on Max's face as the dummy was carried away by the rapids and beyond the final frontier of the U-bend.

There was a sharp intake of breath before he burst into a sobbing "My doddy, my doddy, my very last doddy" and had to be physically stopped from diving in after it.

Mum flew upstairs and stood, menacingly, at the bathroom door. "You haven't flushed it away, have you?" she demanded to know.

Well, what was I supposed to have done? Fished it out? And then what? I might be stupid, but I'm not that big a sucker.

But, as is so often the case, logic didn't come into it: "That was his last one and we're in the middle of a star chart," she raged. And so began an hour-long hunt for another dummy to replace the very last dummy which wasn't going to be replaced under any circumstances, absolutely not.

We looked in drawers, cupboards, down the sides of the settee, behind the curtains, and under the chairs. Mum finally found one - long since lost behind a toy boxes on top of a wardrobe - and shoved it into Max's mouth.

Then, without a word, she stomped off to bed with the uneaten supper left to go cold. Even when the last doddy's finally gone, there'll still be a dummy left in our house...

THE THINGS THEY WRITE...

AN e-mail arrived last week from Iceland. It had been sent by Ethne Parker, once of Darlington, but now of Hvolsvollur, who wanted to order a copy of the new Dad At Large book - To Vasectomy And Beyond - for husband Christopher's birthday.

"He loves to regale people, usually men about to undergo 'the op', with tales of horror and proudly displays the certificate from the hospital which proclaims him sterile," she wrote.

The book is on its way to Iceland. Happy birthday Christopher.

The new Dad At Large book is on sale at Ottakars in Darlington and at Northern Echo offices. It costs £5 and £1 goes to the Butterwick Children's Hospice for every copy sold.