Signs your child is not quite "normal"

This has been a difficult week. Ellie has been waking up a few times a night, she loses her pacifier and gets herself unwrapped. We are still swaddling her because she will pull the pacifier out and throw it across the room. You know that hysterical baby way they toss something, then realize, dude I totally want that. So if she is swaddled it takes longer for her to lose it. Which, when you are crawling under a crib feeling around for a clear pacifier, you want the longest interval possible. I don't even pretend to clean it off for her any more. A little dirt never hurt is my motto.

Which reminded me.... My family has always had a saying when you drop a fork, or pacifier or whatever " you have to eat a pound of dirt before you die". Which makes sense, why worry about every speck of dirt.

However, as a three year old I took this very differently. I thought it was more like a rule. I wondered what would happen if you didn't ingest enough dirt accidentally. What if I died young and hadn't eaten enough dirt? Would I be required to eat the remainder of the pound of dirt in one sitting? This concerned me quite a bit. So I decided the best course of action was to eat a spoon of dirt each day. This way, if I died at four or five I would have a head start on the bucket of dirt I was required to eat. I figured I would have to guess at how much dirt was in a pound, it sounded like a lot. I think I did this for a few weeks before my mom caught me. Then we had a long talk about figures of speech.

Notice how I never thought that if I never ate dirt I wouldn't die. Even at three that was a sort of optimism I couldn't even imagine. I don't know how I would respond to one of my kids explaining this thought process to me. A therapist? An exorcist? Sesame Street?