Name your pig and your chicken
If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it. -Brendan Francis
To the naked eye, this might look like picture of a little plastic pig and a little plastic chicken.
But it is not. In fact, you could not be more wrong. This isn’t a picture of a little plastic pig and a little plastic chicken, no. This, my friend, is a picture of what absolute, burning, overwhelming desire looks like.
It all started a few weeks ago.
One afternoon, I got to Tess’ pre-school to pick her up just after 3:30pm. The kids were all on the playground, hiding from parents who came to get them. Tess ran over to me, standing nearby as I talked with her teacher. She held a part of her dress in a tiny wad in front of her, the fabric wound around her fingers. “Did you hurt your finger?” I asked, bending down to get on her level. “Can I see it?”
Tess shook her head from side to side. “Is it hurt?” I asked again. I’m not big on blood and hoped the answer was “no.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not hurt.”
“She’s been holding it like that for a while,” the teacher explained. “But she doesn’t seem to have hurt it.”
We walked into the classroom to pick up her lunchbox, and then to the car. As I glanced down at Tess, I could see that her finger was still wound up inside of the piece of dress fabric right in front of her where her belly button was.
I opened the car door and Tess climbed in, still grasping the dress as she sat down in the car seat. To fasten the straps of the car seat, she needed to briefly let go and thread her arms through. She did so awkwardly. “Tess,” I said, “do you have something in your hand? Did you take something from your classroom?”
“NO!” she answered, shaking her head. “No.” She wouldn’t look at me.
“Okay, then, Tess. Are you sure?”
We drove away, making our way to Black Dome Outfitters so I could return a pair of hiking boots that, it turns out, were lovingly handcrafted by adorable beret-wearing natives in the rolling hills of Italy especially for people who hike 215 miles a day 365 days a year and who harbor an unnatural desire to ice climb by bolting big strips of metal into the front of the boots to dig into the face of ice walls. While I do like to ice climb with the best of them, I fear I only needed a pair of boots that would be useful for hiking 100 miles a day. Or a nice cot for a nap. Ahem.
When we arrived, it was clear that something was inside that wad of fabric in her dress, and not a hurt finger. “Tess,” I said, “whatever you have in your hand, you need to leave it in the car seat. You can’t take it in with you.”
She looked nervous, the kind of look that reflects a vast internal process of deliberation, all occurring at the speed of light. She leaned forward and rose from the seat, simultaneously turning away from me and scooping open the dress wad. A small white object tumbled out into the car seat.
“Tess!” I said. “Is that from your classroom?”
She sat down on top of the white object. “Tessie,” I continued, my voice softening to help her save face, “we can’t take things from our classroom. What if everyone took things from there? There wouldn’t be anything left for you to play with, would there? That wouldn’t be any fun, would it?”
She reached with her right arm underneath her bottom and extracted the cutest little plastic lego chicken I had ever seen. I wanted it immediately. “Tessie, we’re going to have to take that back to school tomorrow and talk to Ms Jess about why you took it.”
She looked at me, wide-eyed, frozen.
Then, in a moment I will never forget, without a word, she lifted up the front of her dress with one arm, pulled out the waistband of her panties, and reached deep inside with the other. After a moment, she slowly pulled her hand back out, and wordlessly handed me the pig.
I had to work hard not to laugh. Really hard. Bite your lip on the inside and look down hard.
“Tessie!” I exclaimed after a moment of gathering myself. “They are so cute!”
“They fit together, Mama!” she said excitedly, showing me with her chunky, dimpled fingers how chicken fit on pig’s back.
“They are adorable,” I said. “Now, let’s leave them in the car and go into the store to return these boots, and then we’ll talk about Pig and Chicken when we come back, okay?”
We talked that evening. We made photographs of Pig and Chicken so Tess could hang them in her room. She wrote an apology to her teacher ("I am so sorry I took Pig and Chicken. I really LOVE them but I shouldn’t have taken them), and took it in the next day, with Pig and Chicken in the envelope. She stuffed the letter in her cubby, it turns out, and gave it to her beloved Ms Jess at the end of the day, unable to bear it earlier. Perhaps it was comforting to know for those few hours that Pig and Chicken were still hers, safe in her cubby in an envelope. Perhaps she thought she could still make a break for it with them in her panties.
37days Do it Now Challenge
What’s the pig in your panties?
(You know what? I could have lived an entire lifetime without ever having had the excuse to write that question. I feel oddly satisfied now that I’ve had the opportunity…)
What Pig is worth the risk? What Pig is not worth the risk? Distinguishing between the two is important.
While I couldn’t condone stealing, I could celebrate the depth of desire that had led Tess there. I could help Tess acknowledge her own desire. I could respect that in her small four-year-old way, she had the guts to stake everything on obtaining it. I could help her save face and lead her back to truth. I could, of course, also to this day continue to search for a similar Chicken and Pig at yard sales because they are painfully adorable and would make her clap her hands together in absolute glee.
I can’t help but wonder how life would be different if we felt that kind of desire about relationships or peace or social justice, not things. That we just HAD to have them. That we would let nothing stand in our way. That we would stuff them in our panties, if need be. So to speak.
What’s your Pig? Your Chicken? What will you risk for them?
