How I WISH This Post Had Pictures...

We interrupt this broadcast of the 12 Days of Davis Christmas to share a funny tale of my favorite husband. I would give my right arm and both my kidneys to have had photographic evidence of it, but you'll have to settle for a mental picture.

It was another not-so-quiet day around the hospital, and my husband (who weareth many hats) was alerted to a dire need in the Transitions (geriatric psych) department. It seems that baby dolls are very popular among some of the patients in that unit, and the resident baby had come up missing.

After a little research (which the hat-wearing husband loveth much), it was determined that the baby doll had been loaned to a patient in the CCU and accidentally sent home with that person. Their gain was geri-psych's painful loss, but the staff thought they had tucked away a spare baby. They had, but that baby was COMPLETELY unsuitable to the patients (and let's just leave it at that, shall we?) and so the hat-wearing husband was dispatched to Walmart with the hospital's credit card.

At Walmart, he entered a foreign world; a girly aisle full of pink and ruffles, sparkly tiaras, and yes--baby dolls. It's Christmas and so the selection is pretty large, but Arvel had specific orders: he was NOT to bring back a baby that talked or cried, lest it scare a patient half to death. And that's where it got complicated.

He found a couple babies that looked appropriate, but he HAD to be sure they didn't speak. (And it apparently never crossed his mind to read the packaging...) He did what any normal man (who has no doll experience) would do: he began pinching, squeezing and shaking the babies vigorously to check! A gray-haired man in a business suit--wearing his hospital ID badge--stood beating a baby doll in the toy aisle!

Apparently, he managed to be sure they were SILENT dolls before anyone called the police, and the hat-wearing husband delivered 2 new babies to the unit without being arrested on suspicion of child abuse.

I did my wifely duty: I laughed until I cried, and teased him to no end about behaving like a crazy loon in the girl's aisle at Walmart. Mid-cackle, I spotted a gnat in the kitchen, stalking the Christmas cookies, and I began swatting and yelling at the little beastie--until my husband announced that he could see no gnats anywhere and he was a little worried about me.

And then he offered to get me a baby doll...