THE BABY ONE

one rainy day, after a walk in the wet grass,  I was fluffing the dog with a towel and calming him with the silly baby talk we often use with pets. 

"There's a good boy, roll over and let me do your tummy, now tickles for the baby one and kisses for the mummy one!" 

My goodness - where did that come from? 

Zoooommm back almost 40 years and I'm sitting on the 'night n day' couch (it unfolded into what was almost a double bed and we slept on it for a year) breast feeding my first born and crooning, "You're the little baby one and I'm the big mummy one!" 

Another zooooommmmm back to see myself, half way between my first and second birthdays, standing in the cream painted wooden cot, in a pale green room. I can reach the window and see into the neighbour's backyard but I'm not looking outside, I'm checking my toys, lined up on the window sill. The collection of plastic bunny rabbit money boxes that grew each pay day when my very young father, a bank teller then, brought home a new one.  They came in a variety of colours, mine were mostly shades of green but also  pink, yellow and blue. Standing on my toes in the cot I could almost look them in the eye. I'd touch each one with my index finger and announce it's place in the family.  "This is the daddy one, this is the mummy one and this is the baby one, and the aunty one, the grandpa one". and so on.

The neighbours could see in the window from their veranda. They said hello to me, and the bunnies, every morning and if the window was open I entertained them with my bunny news,  "The baby one didn't eat his peas." 

The year I was born, Lines Bros in England were mass producing toys from plastic and not far away, in Denmark - where both my great-grandfathers were born - the LEGO company bought a plastic injection-molding machine to produce plastic toys. Two years later that machine was producing 200 different toys, including plastic stacking bricks. It was the age of plastic. I wonder where my plastic bunnies were made.

Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, 

they can train people to stand on the very edge of a pool and throw them fish.