Double vision

The History

When we first put Skylar in his own room when he as about 6 months old, we gave him a stuffed dog to sleep with. "Dog", as we called him (nice and simple), quickly became very special to Skylar, so we put some rules around Dog. For example, Dog had to stay in Skylar's room; this was when we were in a two-story house and I did not want to have to be searching for Dog while it was Skylar's bedtime. Skylar went along with it and months went by as Dog took on his precious status as Skylar's bunk buddy.

The First Crisis

Eventually Dog had become super dirty and stinky from Skylar chewing, sucking, and dropping his bottle on him. I thought I would be smart and run it through the wash without Skylar knowing. Well that didn't work. Skylar was mobile by then and he spotted Dog in the washing machine in mid-cycle and cried like I had never heard, and he cried, and he cried! There was no distracting him; he watched Dog going around and around in the machine. Then it was time to dry Dog, and that did not go over well either.

After that I decided we needed to get another to have as a back up. Well, that was not easy because Mervyn's was going out of business and there were no more Dogs. Then one day we were at a friend's house and they had a Dog. Skylar found him right away and would not let him go. Our friends were kind enough to give us that dog and then I had two. I quickly hid it and from then on we've had a rotation of Dog, the whole time Skylar never knowing and never without a Dog. It was great and made life so easy.

Double Vision

Last night Skylar woke up crying and something was bothering him. After many attempts to get him back to sleep, he finally made his way out of his room with Dog securely tucked under his arm. He was apparently on a mission, so I followed. He led me through the living room and through the kitchen into the mud room where he took me to our old Roomba, which was sitting in a box needing to be fixed. He was talking about it and telling me some story. He then pointed to the new Roomba box and was telling me something about it. He then led me back into the kitchen and told me about some of the other things we did today like make lemon juice. He walked over to me and handed me Dog and said "No." I assumed he wanted to walk and not hold Dog. Through all this he seemed to be still half asleep, in a sort of dreamy state. I told him it was time to go to bed and turned off the kitchen lights.

He came out of the kitchen with me and was walking through the living room when he froze and cried out "DOG!" I was slightly confused and then I saw what he saw: there was Dog lying on the couch. (We had been folding the laundry and the alternate Dog, or was it the original?, was among the piles.) Skylar looked at me with Dog in my hands and back at Dog on the couch, and back and forth with such a big sad face! I wasn't sure what to do, so I walked up to him and gave him the Dog from my hands and he took it and started to cry and ran to his room crying. I felt horrible.

He was in his bed crying for me, so I went in there while I had Guy put the other Dog away. I got him tucked in with Dog and he started to fall asleep. When I went back in there a bit later, he was lying there on his back awake staring up at the ceiling. He saw me and was telling me "Dog sit", and "Dog", so I went over to him and found his Dog among his covers, and tucked him back in.

Mysteries

I couldn't help thinking that in some mysterious way the events of that night were all connected. Was Skylar lamenting the replacement of the old Roomba with the new? Was he shocked to see Dog being replaced by an impostor in the same way? It was surprising to see him lying there awake contemplating the whole thing and talking about Dog. And what made him wake up in the first place like that anyway? He'd been asleep for a while before the whole thing started. Guy and I hoped that Skylar might just think of the whole event as a dream and forget that Dog is a doppelganger, and so far today, there don't seem to be any consequences. Even so, we can't help thinking that something deep and mysterious and meaningful happened for Skylar last night that's now buried in his subconscious.