Olivia’s Special Ball

I bought a new notebook the other day; to a writer, there is no such thing as “too many” when it comes to those wonderful spiral-bound books of crisp white paper.  After giving some thought to what this notebook should hold, I decided to entitle it “Things Worth it”; it is a daily record of the lessons I have learned during the course of just living out my normal life. 

 

My first entry was about yesterday’s encounter with my one of my three-year old granddaughters, Olivia, and the life’s lesson for yesterday is that a three year old who gets her hands on a vibrator will eventually find a good place for it.  Let me explain.

 

My daughter, Erika, and I went shopping yesterday, at a local department store.  Olivia is great to take along; she stays fairly closely and looks at things we are looking at.  Erika and I were looking at the fabulous selection of summer tops they have and I looked out of the corner of my eye to see Olivia walking towards me with what looked like half of a nubby ball.

 

“Look, Nana!” she said as she held it up and pressed a button on the flat bottom. It was a massager type of thing that whenever you pushed it down it vibrated. My daughter, who is beginning the long process of a divorce, grinned at me when I told her I’d get her one for her upcoming birthday.  We went about our shopping.

 

“Nana, try this!” Olivia said and I turned to look at her; she held it up to my back and it felt wonderful.  I held it to hers for a moment and then she decided to take off her shoes and see if it tickled her feet. She tried it on her hands, her arms, and her head as we shopped.  We eventually went to the shoe department and Olivia alternated trying on shoes with her mother and massaging various parts of her body.

 

I looked down to check on her and she was now sitting directly on the half-ball as it vibrated loudly. I elbowed Erika and we tried to contain our laughter. Of course it was only natural for her to try it there; it’s just another body part to her, but it presented a bit of a quandary for us: what do we do now?  Let her continue and hope she lost interest?  She didn’t look like she was going to lose interest any time soon, so Erika asked casually, “Does it feel good there, Olivia?”

 

Olivia looked up at us with innocent eyes and proclaimed, “not yet, mama”.

 

Lesson learned: if you see a 3 year old with a massaging ball, distract her, guick!