My son lies upstairs, bereft.
His lifetime long-nosed companion, Bumpy the Elephant, he who graced his cot and marches with him through life: he has once again gone Absent Without Leave.
This is happening nightly.
A few nights ago I spent many fruitless minutes rooting under sofas, behind cabinets and in toyboxes to no avail. He finally materialised, stuffed by the paper-cutter next to the telly in the middle sitting room.
These are, at least, short sojourns in the scheme of elephant exploration. They can last up to six weeks.
Once we feared we had lost him irrevocably. But no: he turned up, the bizarre product of a Narnian game the children had been playing in one of our cavernous wardrobes. Six weeks after his mysterious disappearance, there we found him, in among the camphor balls and well-pressed suits, looking for a lamp-post that wasn’t there.
Bumpy has disappeared on more occasions than my slightly challenged long-term memory can keep track of. The tension when he is missing is taut, relief when we find him once again palpable. Seven-year-old little boys need their comfort toys.
Tonight, Felix walked in just before bedtime and announced that Bumpy was missing.
An involuntary groan escaped my lips.”Felix!” I said, “Not again?”
His face fell and he desperately attempted to bluster, but I could tell he was really quite upset. I followed his headlong dramatic Bumpyless dash upstairs and sat talking to the small miserable mountain in the duvet for some minutes.
His words were revealing.
“I put him somewhere really carefully every time!,” he protested. “And then I think somebody moves him so that I can’t find him!”
Perhaps The Borrowers are hosting Bumpy tonight.
It is the concept of Mary Norton’s tiny creatures that is the kernel of her genius: The Borrowers are tiny people who live under the floorboards in an ordinary house. And they make their way through life by ‘borrowing’ tiny quantities of things that belong to the ‘human beans’ which live above the floorboards in a land of giants.
The Clock Family: Pod, Homily and their daughter Arietty, keep the wolf from the door with little acquisitions like fibres from a doormat , which make a good scrubbing-brush.
A Borrower housewife has much to be thankful for: Mary Norton writes: “Homily was proud of her sitting-room – the walls had been papered with scraps of old letters out of waste-paper baskets, and Homily had arranged the handwriting sideways in vertical stripes which ran from floor to ceiling. On the walls, repeated in various colours, hung several portraits of Queen Victoria as a girl; these were postage stamps, borrowed by Pod some years ago from the stamp-box on the desk in the morning-room.
“There was a lacquer trinket-box, padded inside and with the lid open, which they used as a settle, and that useful stand-by – a chest of drawers made of match boxes. There was a round table with a red velvet cloth, which Pod had made from the wooden bottom of a pill-box supported on the carved pedestal of a knight from the chess-set.”
The ultimate recyclers. Could they be responsible for Bumpy’s absence?
No: they could not. And while I did not lecture my son I could perceive, loud and clear, something underlying his words: a way of thinking which I keep close to my heart, and tucked in my purse, and at the front of my mind most of the time.
It is called ‘Locus of Control’.
Rotter by name, but not by nature: Julian Rotter was born in 1916 and followed a classic academic’s path with a small spell advising the US army, finally settling at the University of Connecticut.
From 1954 onwards a stream of ground breaking theory began to emerge from Rotter’s research. It’s complicated: let us see if I can define it accurately without risking the ire of a thousand psychologists.
Stuff happens.
And I may be one of those people who think stuff happens because events outside my control make it so: I blame other people, fate, and other stories.
Alternatively, I may be one of those souls who believes what I do has a direct bearing on the stuff that happens.
So: Felix’s locus of control – a sort of fulcrum, his perception of who, or what, steers the events in his life – may be external. Felix may posit (if seven-year olds can posit) that his elephant is being controlled by contraband elephant smugglers, a parental conspiracy or The Borrowers.
Or, that locus is bang smack inside Felix. He thinks: “I must have put Bumpy somewhere. If I track back for long enough I will find him.”
I watch my own locus of control like a hawk. I can be found stomping round the kitchen blaming Phil for the missing marmalade: but in most cases I was the culprit who stashed it in an original place.
Listen. Just today. And I will wager you a cuddly elephant to a jar of marmalade that you hear that locus of control in action.
My husband, whose locus is generally internal, has just rooted tirelessly. He is correct in assuming his actions have a direct effect on events around him. He has just found Bumpy wedged behind the toilet.
Naturally.
Kate Shrewsday 
Glad that Bumpy turned up.
Fostering an internal locus of control does much for our freedom and autonomy in life. When we accept responsibility for what happens “due to us,” when we see the cause and effect relationship between actions and consequences, we are spurred to make better, more mindful decisions and choices.
In contrast, when we see things happening “to us,” we are less inclined to be pro-active because, really, why bother . . . Bumpy just goes missing anyway.
Like you, when something goes missing around here, I generally look to my BFF as the likely culprit. My inclination in this regard is generally correct. 🙂
I actually use the concept in teaching social skills now, Nancy. When we are talking through an incident where someone has hit out in the playground I draw a circle and a dot way outside. As the kids talk and begin to have the courage to assume responsibility for their actions I move the dot further towards the centre of the circle. At the beginning, it’s all “she made me” and “if I hadn’t been in that particular place it wouldn’t have happened: and by the end they are saying “I did it. I reacted to what she said wrongly.” The dot makes it to the centre.
Locus of control: Such a fabulous concept for us all.
That is an AWESOME visual aid, Kate!
🙂
My family and friends would be amazed at how much Stuff they make happen to me before I do a U-turn and decide I’m responsible. Or that it’s just road construction or a wonky Internet connection or other universal Stuff.
I’m glad Bumpy wasn’t Borrowed. He must have many stories to tell about his adventures.
Kathy, there are at least a thousand nights worth of tales…
I had a blanket when I was very young. She was a lot harder to lose than some of my other toys but I was convinced that she went went on all kinds of great adventures when I wasn’t around.
Hopefully, Bumpy keep his shenanigans PG.
Let us hope so, Posky 😀 These comfort blankets have a habit of going AWOL….that’s a brilliant blog you have there, by the way. I am planning the perfect moment to jump out at my children and shout “crematoria!!”
While I loved The Borrowers as a child, and imagined them into my existence on many occasions, I am glad to know they didn’t have Bumpy, though that might have been a more pleasant fate than behind the toilet! Ah, Phil to the rescue.
My mind is still boggling as to how he got there, Penny: must quiz Felix today while the Bumpster is in the washing machine…
Have you checked behind the living room curtains? In the laundry basket? In the space between mattress and floor on the wall side? The shed? The green house? In the Lego box? Have you tried the school bag?
These, and many other places are the places Hobbes has been found. But that was in the past….
Hobbes is a ginger and white cat-like stuffed toy who was loved so much I had to re-stuff and stitch him. I knitted him a red jumper to cover up the repairs.
But he is no longer taken into the bed of a 14 year old, but lives instead in a heap of soft toys in a laundry basket bought specially for the purpose – until he recently went missing. (He was found this time in the Lego cupboard)
There were a handful of especially important toys. And they all had voices. Caroline Crab, George the Monkey and Shakey the Lion, for example – and of course Hobbes. And all of them now live in this animal heap, in this specially bought laundry basket…. with no-one ready to take the next step.
However, among this animal collection there is ‘a whole herd of elephants’- so if a substitute is required for Bumpy, just let me know. He can surely be supplied with a suitable grey friend, for as long as is required.
(or a substitute ‘in reserve’ so to speak. Have an elephant for a future emergency, such as a need to visit the washing machine?)
It is hard to duplicate something some time after it was bought. A wise friend after difficulties with her second, got the third baby attached to small cotton squares, she had a lot of them and they were all interchangeable. No little girl sitting howling under the washing line while her favourite blanket dried.
We bought duplicate Bumpys, but the manufacturers had subtly changed the material in the interim, and Felix sussed they were different at three years old. Now we also have Lumpy, a poor substitute it seems. The day we messed up and he discovered two almost identical elephants was a comedy moment…
Thank you Pseu 😀 What a fabulous comment! I am intrigued that even at the age of 14 Hobbes went walkabout. It must be the Borrowers.
Phil still has his childhood bear somewhere. These toys do such a tour of duty for little boys: for some saying goodbye is just too much.
One can never duplicate the original, but a stand in can be helpful.
So I have emptied out the heap of toys and posed the herd for your amusement… will upload, once WordPress is up to speed again. Seems a little jerky this morning
Just found this Pseu, after a sunny afternoon at Windsor Castle. I’m off to investigate 🙂
Living as I do on my own (with 2 cats) I can only blame them for some small things that wander off. The majority of missing objects is all the fault of the creatures that inabit the world just out of my sight.
Poor boy, his buddy does seem to have some wandering tendencies.
I was wondering if a certain smallish hound has any hand in the elephant’s movements?
That’s a vey clever comment, Sidey, and one worth entertaining. Macaulay usually only has time for one cuddly toy, a small labrador long since un-stuffed…but we’ll watch him like a hawk.
Oh my hat, so glad Bumpy’s back!
So, Cindy, is Felix 🙂 Thank you.
We had a similar problem with my youngest and Ted-Ted-Teddy. My sister-in-law bought him the same teddy to solve the problem: instead, it magnified it, for now we had two Ted-Ted-Teddys to locate.
That’s life.
Indeed. Can’t live without the Ted-Ted-Teddys of this world, but they drive you crazy. Ho hum.
http://pseu1.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/a-whole-herd/
Has Felix gone to bed? The elephants are waiting for hm
He’s already seen them!! I left a comment but it WAS in the middle of a family meal and he was in full swing so I might not have been concentrating….I’ll go back and try again…
Thank you Pseu. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. Huge grin, of course. So many elephants!
Not necessarily a believer in the locus of control, perhaps i will change my mind out of loyalty: UConn is my alma mater. I confess to not knowing Rotter’s name – I was there 1969-1973 – perhaps he was gone from there by then?
No, currently my explanation for Felix’s (and others’ problem) is, GHOSTS! Playful ghosts frequently like to monkey around with our things and then watch to see what we will do! For instance, once a ghost took the head of lettuce my Grandmother B. had “put in the refrigertor’s crisper” and stashed it in the freezer. The lettuce looked wonderful – fresh as the day purchased – for about 1 hour. It rather lost its looks and beauty very quickly. as time progressed. Ghosts. . .it has to be ghosts. After all, you live in England – isn’t that where most of the world’s ghosts live? Don’t they all come from and reside in Canterbury?
;-D
Rotter has settled and stayed at Connecticut, I believe. Time to get the old year books out…is that what you have there? Our universities here are huge and we would never know much about other departments unless we had friends there.
Freezing lettuces – now that’s mischief incarnate!
Ah, you have such a way with words, Kate. I was sitting alongside you, heartsore for your small miserable mountain under the duvet. Poor chap – Bumpys of this world are so precious. I’m glad you found him – didn’t you think to look behind the toilet first? 🙂
Sunshine xx
I will next time, Sunshine! Tonight Bumpy has managed to stay with Felix right through till bedtime. Three cheers!
The trick is with these animals is this: they rarely use the same hiding place twice.
Except occasionally, just to catch you out, they do – when you least expect it.
Such a great post, and one I can absolutely relate to. My 4-year-old has a small stuffed cat dubbed “Special Kitty” who gets lost regularly. No matter where my son insists he has left Special Kitty, I always, ALWAYS find him in the same spot…sitting snug-up against the wall under the bed.
Don’t you wish we’d thought of purchasing 20 of these lovies so they would never go missing?
I fervently do, Maura…I’m now trying to think of a way to tell all brand new parents everywhere to do just that. Phil went on ebay to find some Bumpys when Felix was three or so. They were fetching about six times their original purchase price: they had us over a barrel and we bought one, only to realise it was made of very slightly different fabric. Curses.