The Perfect Prize

You know those gumball machines in grocery stores and restaurants? The ones that you put a quarter (or two, these days) in, turn the knob and it gives you either candy, gum or a junky plastic trinket?

Yeah, those. Last weekend I stopped by our local Chinese food restaurant to pick up some hot and sour soup. As the girls and I were leaving, Olivia spied the wall of machines. She glanced up at me, hopeful.

I nodded and started going through my wallet for quarters. Olivia went back to the machines and tried to decide what she wanted. Did she want some candy? A gumball?

No, she decided. She wanted one of those stretchy, sticky hands that you can wing across the room and have it stick to the wall, leaving a nice grease stain.

The picture on the machine showed a variety of items you might get. A hand, a foot, even a frog. Olivia was beside herself with excitement over what it might be when that little plastic bubble dropped into the slot that lets the prize out.

She gently lifted the lid and pulled out her toy. Then she tried to pry the lid off the case and…it wouldn’t budge.

I handed my soup to Alyssa and took the thing from Olivia, trying to pry it myself. Nope. Alyssa handed me the soup back and tried her hand at pulling the lid off the case to see what treasure it held.

Nope. Not happening. We headed to the car to try there, out of the cold.

Alyssa tried again in the car while Olivia bounced in her car seat, waiting to see what it was.

I took the stupid thing back and used a key to pry the lid off. Before I got the plastic wrap off the sticky thing, I said to Olivia, “Ohhh, Livie, I think it’s lips!! How perfect.”

And it was. It was a pair of lips at the end of the handle, lips she could fling about, collecting all kinds of dust and lint.

She was in love! She put those lips up to her own lips and declared that she had “mommy lips.” Ha! Whatever that means.

She’s bathed with those lips, fallen asleep with them clutched in her hands, washed them several times to get some of the gunk off them. Four days later, they’re no longer sticky but they’re still stretchy and she’s still as infatuated with them as ever.

Alyssa asked this morning if she could poke a hole in the lips. Olivia looked at her in horror, as if Alyssa had asked if she could punch the tooth fairy in the face. Alyssa qualified her question, “If you ever don’t like it anymore.”

Olivia clutched those lips to her chest protectively and walked away, shaking her head in disgust.

If ever there was a perfect present, those lips were it for Olivia. Quite a bargain for $.50.