I don’t remember why we were in Kohl’s but within 5 minutes I found myself squeezing sideways through the ramshackle toy department in the far left corner of the big box store, between the surprising pop-up electronics section (has that always been there?) and racks upon racks of bedazzled little girl clothes. The Mrs. eventually found me, confused like a lost puppy, and asked why I’d dared to step foot into the land of Frozen dolls, molded plastic ninja turtles and noisy things with batteries set on demo mode for the sheer delight of their consumers. I had no coherent answers.
It’s true that if you knock knock her over, she will indeed get back up again but unlike the ‘real’ Poppy from the movie, this wiggling plastic Troll has an off switch. Hard to recover from that kind of fall. Eventually we’ll see just how committed she is to overcoming obstacles because, well, because my wife and I looked at each other as her song sputtered out of the speaker holes ’round back of her cupcake pedestal, and before the “knock knock my over part” was finished we both were pictureing our littlest daughter dancing around the house with glee, with this plastic Poppy in her hand, defiantly telling the world (er, the feline and human residents of our house) that she too will get back up again. The foreshadowing was easy and it was beautiful. Plus, not a bad mantra, as mantras go.
We picked up the Troll seated upon the baby blue cupcake, carried it to the cashier, and paid cash money to take her home; an Anna Kendrick-voiced singing, hip shaking, pink haired, plastic Poppy Troll. This isn’t the gift of a demented uncle seeking to inflict cruel and unusual pain on his brother and sister-in-law, no, we willingly purchased a noisy thing with batteries for our youngest daughter. And we did so with love because this is what love sometimes looks like, and, well, sounds like.
We know she’ll love it, her singing dancing Poppy Troll, if only for a few weeks, and that’s okay in the grand scheme of it all because short bursts of childhood joy are worth the relatively small amount of money (everything is always on sale at Kohl’s), and AAA batteries, and noise.
Signed, the doting dad who happily bought multiple Furbies last year.