Call It What You Want...

This morning, a certain young boy I know got up and held out his last beloved pacifier to me, telling me "Dirt, holes in it. Throw trash. Mark throw trash."

He had been warned that this was the last one, and when it got holes in it (I can't figure out how, when I catch him gnawing on it...), it would have to go in the trash.

Okay, I told him. If it's time, it's time. He took the pacifier and dashed down the hall to the bathroom. I had to deter him from tossing it in the "terlet" (yes, that's how he says toilet) and direct him toward the trash can. He looked into the wastebasket, looked at the pacifier, commented again on the holes, and dropped it in.

Now it's naptime. He asked for pacifier when I put him down, after whining about different music and a different toy. I told him the pacifier was all gone, that he'd thrown it away. He didn't complain about it further.

I had horrors of him going off to college with the pacifier. He's only had it at night for most of his life (not during the day and certainly not when we're out somewhere), but I could imagine the first night in the freshman dorm, Mark pops out the pacifier before bed. All the other freshman boys laugh. Mark earns the nickname "Nuk" or "Binky" or something like that (despite the fact that we've always called it "Pacifier"). When he gets his first engineering job (or bulldozer-driving job, or farming job, depending), the guys all think it's a funny name, and when he retires 50 years later, they're all still calling him Binky.

I do like, though, that it seems to have been his decision. We just have to help him live with it.