Y is for Yikes!

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

I tasked myself with cleaning out the vanity in the half bath of my parents' house. The bathroom is separated from the kitchen by a little mudroom that has a doorway to the garage and one to the laundry room. There is a small, curtainless window just above the toilet where our family spent years mooning the deer in the woods behind the house and possibly an occasional Pendrak from next door (sorry, Pendraks).

The drawers in the vanity held fairly straight-forward items: a comb, a pair of thinning shears (slightly odd, but not questioning my mom's probable intent to trim her hair with good lighting from that window), Bath & Bodyworks Wallflower plug-ins, extra soap. I opened the doors to the part of the vanity underneath the sink expecting to find the same sort of routine, mundane bathroom items, and instead, I found this:

It's my chalkware Raggedy Ann bank and she is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE STANDING AT THIS ANGLE. Look closely at her feet. LOOK AT THEM!!!

I carefully lifted her body, and her legs stayed where they were under the sink, her guts pennies spilling onto the bottom of the vanity and the floor. 

In the dampness under the sink, Raggedy Ann's legs and feet literally melted onto the bottom of the vanity. OH, THE HUMANITY!!!

I did a Google Lens search to find out more about her, since I don't remember when, exactly, I got her, but it was most likely in the late 1960s. The only thing I found out, and believe me when I say this adds insult to injury, is SHE ISN'T EVEN A RAGGEDY ANN! She is a knock off called RAGGI JILL. I spent my entire lifetime thinking she was a Raggedy Ann, but apparently, there is a copyright attorney out there somewhere who disagreed.

I picked up all the loose pennies from the floor and the inside of the vanity, and then I picked them out of the remains of Raggedy Ann's (sorry, I refuse to accept that she is not the real thing, so sue me) feet, where they were melted into the chalkware. I even found her plug.*

All I was left with from this travesty was approximately four pounds of pennies and the burning question, "WHO PUT RAGGEDY ANN UNDER THE BATHROOM SINK?!" I would surely have noticed at some time that she was under there, because I HAD to have gotten toilet paper out of that cabinet at some time, and, at 14" tall, there's no way I wouldn't have seen her.

RIP Raggedy Ann or Raggi Jill,
whoever you are

 * some people might say this was her butt plug ("some people" being my friend Nikki)