When my nephew "Liam" was born I gave him a baby blanket I had made for him. It was just a simple, pretty thing made of blue and white knitted squares sewn together.

That baby afghan became Liam's "blankie". Liam and blankie were inseparable, and although Liam grew to be a handsome, healthy, little guy, blankie did not improve with age. In time it turned from blue and white to gray, and it was such a disgusting, stained, raveling rag that the mere sight of it made me want to faint. And/or pick it up with tongs and deposit in the nearest wood-burning stove.

One night at bedtime when Liam was about three and a half, he realized that blankie was missing. After a search it was determined that he must have left it outside when he was playing outdoors that afternoon.

My brother and his family live on a farm. In southwestern Ontario. Their "backyard" is enormous. It was a winter's night and there were drifts of snow everywhere. It was dark outside. and they don't have outside lights on anything but their carport area. You can imagine how difficult it would be to find a greyish blanket.

My brother tried to take a tough-love approach and told his little son, "Liam, you took your blankie outside when you shouldn't have and you lost it and now you're just going to have to go to bed without it. We'll have a look for it tomorrow."

This was at 8:00. At 10:00 Liam was still screaming. My brother and sister-in-law had run the whole gamut of parental techniques (i.e., reason, sympathy, stern reproofs, bribes, threats, promises, substitutes, distractions). Nothing worked. Liam was inconsolable. He wanted blankie and NOTHING BUT BLANKIE.

So at 10:00 p.m., my brother and sister-in-law found themselves outside ("Like a pair of fools", as my sister-in-law put it), armed with shovels and flashlights, searching the snowbanks for the lost blanket.

Meanwhile Liam stood at the screen door and screamed, "FIND IT!!!" [sob, choke, gasp, sniffle] "FIND IT!!!!" [sob, choke, gasp, sniffle].

They didn't find it that night. Liam finally passed out at about midnight after he'd been screaming and generally carrying on for four hours straight.

Blankie turned up in the spring when the snow melted. They washed it and let him have it back. I would NOT have done so. After living through that hellish evening and after Liam had learned to do without it, I would have taken it as my God-given right to destroy the thing and never have to deal with a Liam-and-blankie issue again.

Liam is now 19 and a strapping apprentice millwright. My sister-in-law says she still has blankie put away somewhere. And that for many years now she has been cherishing a revenge fantasy involving Liam's hypothetical future girlfriends/ wedding. She's merely biding her time.

When we took my daughter's binkie away at 6 months, she attached herself to her blanket. She'd suck on the corners to soothe herself to sleep. It would get nasty and we'd cut the corners off. Over the years, the blankie got smaller and smaller until eventually it was more like a hanky. (Heh.)

One day it was lost. Genuinely lost, not we-sent-Rufus-to-a-farm-where-there-is-plenty-of-room-to-run lost. That was an absolutely hellish week or ten days. But, yes, if we'd ever found it again, after going through that withdrawal period, there is no possible way we'd've given it back to her.

In fact, just yesterday I asked her if she remembered her blanket and how she used to have to have it to sleep. She laughed and made some remark about how she was such a baby back then.

Oh, please, that's nothing! My Mom's sister still has her "guy-guy" (blankie)- and she's 40+ and has 4 kids! It's nothing but a ball of lint, basically. When she gave birth to her first son, the nurses accidentally threw it away, and she made them go and find it.

Aw man, I say let the kids have the blankies for as long as they want them. It's hard to find friends who truly comfort you in this world. And if the friend takes the shape of a blanket, so be it.

You wouldn't think a 101 Dalmations plushie would be that hard to find in Disney World. But when you leave puppy behind at home, a goodly part of your vacation will be spent in a futile effort to find a temporary replacement.

It's true. Blankies (or "woobies" as I call them) help a kid transition from getting comfort only from their caregivers to being able to comfort themselves. Very good to have a woobie.

But that's an awesome story, Orange Swan.

What. It's not like I have a woobie or anything. It's not like I have to find it before I can go to sleep or anything.

Mmm, mine (what was left of it, anyway), went missing one holiday. I still swear to this day that my parents disposed of it, but they still deny it. My niece has her Raggy-Tag (guys, you really need a better site) and it's an instant quietener. Almost without exception, any level of tears can be stemmed by producing it.

TPS: 40+ and still has a blankie? Wow
mudpuppie: yup

Yea, and I have to say, I still have a teddy bear (I got him the day I was born!). And I can't sleep without him.

My Teddy remains at home, guarding my old room from encroaching mom-crafts.

Liam is now 19 and a strapping apprentice millwright.

That sounds like the beginning of a chapter in a romance novel.

I never had a blanky or a (what the fuck is a binkie?) but now I'm starting to feel like I missed out.

Binky = pacifier. Sheesh!

Alright, derail:

I want to hear all your strange names for baby blankets and pacifiers.

Pacifiers: Binkie, Suckie

Blankets: Binkies, Blankies

I'm 42 and still have my baby blanket stored in my cedar chest, and it's in perfectly fine shape. I must have been quite the tidy little tot.

TPS: My mother, who doesn't like cutesy-pie names for things, always called them pacifiers and blankets. I never heard the word binkie until I grew up, and was most astonished.

according to my mom I referred to my pacifier as my "yugga." I was apparently very reluctant to give it up. She even drove to the river and tossed it in. My response was to wail like a banshee.

My wife is Argentine, so pacifiers were "chupetes" (which means "sucker", I think) in our house. We had to provide a literal translation of "pacifier" to her cousin once, who found it most amusing.

The only time that I had a similar reaction (that I can remember) was when I came home from Kindergarten to find that my dad had removed the training wheels from my little bike. I cried and cried, because I knew that bike would not stay upright without them. I cried some more, then sulked, until my dad finally coaxed me onto the damn thing, and I rode off down the street with no problems.

But no, I had no cutesy name for it. I don't remember having a special blanket either.

Sob . . .

My blanket disappeared at grandma's. I still think that's super screwed up. Not only that my mom had the blanket disappear but that she also decided the best place to do it would be at my grandmother's. (Should note that it wasn't her mother but my dad's mother - during the period my parents were getting divorced. And it's not that my mom was being nasty - she just saw a chance to have the blanket disappear - it never occurred to her that I would always associate the blanket disappearing with my grandma until I brought up the point during my teen years. (She still has a good relationship with my dad's mom.)

My daughter once lost a headband in Ashland Creek. In the winter. .it was quite high, rushing through rocks. . .she was inconsolable. . .

I got very wet and cold but finally found it. . .it was like I would have died to get that headband. . it sounds stupid now, and I am sure that my now-17 yo daughter would agree. . .but then, it seemed like a fork in the road of her life and I would have done anything to make this (albeit very minor) loss better.

But the blanket in the snow tops that. . .it's hilarious. And understandable.

I had a blankie as a kid that also got smaller and smaller with time until it had disappeared. But by then I'd moved on to Lion, my stuffed lion I would not sleep without. I still have Lion, along with other memorable stuffed friends, in a box in my shed.
My second son was hooked on his "binkie" or "plug" as I often called it. I can't tell you how many times I was on hands and knees in his room in the middle of the night with a flashlight and a broom looking for the damned thing. Thank God he gave it up by the time he was three (nights only at that point). I can't stand to see kids talking around their pacifiers-like at age 4 or so.

...she just saw a chance to have the blanket disappear...

See, I think this is part of the problem. Adults get *jealous* of the blankies, which is why they so often disappear. Fucking adults.

My daughter has "Soft Manklet" packed away with my old blankets. It got mailed from UT to NC once, thanks to a kind soul who worked at the hotel they stayed in. Leaving softie at the hotel was nothing next to the day Mr. Bear's tail (tag) came off.
A couple of weeks ago I got to pass on the dutch doll quilts my grandma made- to my brother's children- their old quilts had become capes :)

When my then 8 year old brother took his blanket to overnight camp, he told the other kids that it was "family rules" that he had to have it with him.

I've got an old teddy bear that's wearing a pinafore from a now-departed Raggedy Ann doll and she's came with me to California. No way in hell was I going to leave her behind.

I think, though, that my childhood blankie got eaten by time. However, my kid quilt blankie is still at my parents' house I think.

I had an old teddy bear named Bear that I owned for almost 25 years. My dog ate Bear's head while I was in the hospital. I cried.