The Future Frank Booth

My four year old daughter has a favorite blanket. It's not really a blanket, per se. More of a small comforter. In the past three months, she has become inseparable from that blanket, carrying it with her everywhere. For example, a few nights ago she fell asleep in the car and I had to carry her up to her room to go to bed. She was out. Sound asleep. I changed her in to her pajamas on our bed (she is still sound asleep, keep in mind) and as I picked her up to carry her into her room, she quickly reached for her blanket which was right beside her to make sure it came with her. It was like some kind of freakish sense she had. In short, if the house were on fire, her brother, Mother and Father are disposable. The blanket is not.

Part of her attachment with this blanket is that she loves the smell of it - because it smells like her. She calls it her "smelly blanket." I call it her "stinky blanket" and I threaten often to take it and get my smell all over it so it will no longer smell like her. Oh yeah, I'm a good father.

Yesterday morning as I was leaving for work, I noticed the smelly blanket laying in a dining room chair, away from my daughter. She was in the living room watching cartoons. After a few minutes of that, she would get up and run into the dining room to smell her blanket. Then she would run back in to watch cartoons, all the while laughing at what she was doing.

Yes it was cute. Yes it made me laugh. And yes, it made me think exactly of Frank Booth huffing his gas. If at any time she orders a Pabst Blue Ribbon and says "don't toast to my health, toast to my fuck" I'm in a whole lotta trouble.