holly polly

I got a phone call today that had me really worried. it was from my daughter, jane.
I picked up the phone and said, "hello?"
"dad? sniff, sniff..." (she was crying)
I panicked. was something wrong with my wife? what was wrong?!
"yes! jane! are you ok?! what's wrong?!"
"dad, sniff... you know holly right?"
"holly?! who's holly?!"
"holly...my doll..."

backstory: jane has a ton of polly pocket figures.they all basically look the same, but they all have different hairstyles.



so in jane's world of imagination, they are all sisters, and their names all rhyme: polly, dolly, molly, and her favorite, holly.
back to the story:

"yes- holly- did you lose her? is she lost in your room?!"
"no dad...sniff, sniff...its her...its her paint...sniff...its wearing off! we tried to draw her face back on with marker, but it doesn't look right...do you know where we can get a new one?"

holly's eye-brows and lip-paint had worn off from so much playing. normally I might think,  "who cares?! you have a dozen of those dolls- and their heads are interchangeable, just name a different one holly." but when I heard that broken-hearted voice over the phone, my heart melted. I haven't heard that voice in a long time. my dad-instincts kicked in and I had to do something to help my girl. and I immediately recognized that this was an opportunity for me to step into one of my favorite roles: super-dad. and its been too long since I've saved the day.

I left the office and  met up with deanna and jane. we went to a few stores. the polly we were looking for has blonde pony tails on the sides of her head- and after some detective work, we discovered that this particular polly only came with a specific yellow car:

 

this was not going to be easy to find on this afternoon. probably impossible.

we decided that the only way to restore holly's face-paint and keep her unique hairstyle was to pry the blonde pony tails off of the head that had worn out paint, and glue them onto one of the many polly-heads that we had that had good face-paint. their faces are all the same.

 

so when I got home from work, I boiled the heads to losen the glue. that stuff was stuck on there really good. it took a while, but I pried the plastic hair from the heads.

 

 

then I gorilla-glued the blonde pony tails onto a head that had good face-paint, clamped the hair to the head, and let the whole thing dry for an hour.

when I pulled the clamp off, holly was back, and good as new. my daughter was delighted, her tears were dried, her smile was restored, and I got to be super-dad.

 

I have a feeling that my appearances as super-dad are going to be less frequent in the future, so I've got to take advantage of the opportunites when I find them.

 

being a dad is fun.

-rev-rob