doughboy!

If you type “doughboy” into Wikipedia, there are a few possible entries you might be directed to: Doughboy as a slang term for American soldiers, the Pillsbury Doughboy advertising character, a band called the Doughboys (originally from Canada, they have now broken up), the fictional movie character Darin ‘Doughboy’ Baker, and Doughboy Island, which is in Tasmania.

But if you are me or one of my brothers, there is only one thing that you think of when you think of the word doughboy, and that is this thing:

This is my dad’s doughboy. It is on a counter in the kitchen. He keeps various papers in it and every few months he has to clean out the doughboy. If you are ever looking for spare keys or paper that might be located on the counter, then “to the right of the doughboy” or “next to the doughboy” is a perfectly acceptable direction to give. The doughboy is a well-known landmark in our house.

And apparently it was in my dad’s house growing up, as well. I asked my dad about his doughboy, and he said it was just something that was always in their house and his mom gave it to him when he went to law school, or thereabouts. Dad said a doughboy gets its name from its original purpose, which was to knead dough.

Well, flash forward many years, and picture my little family sitting around our Christmas tree. We had opened all our presents, and there were three gift bags left. Normally, we open our presents one at a time, so that Christmas lasts longer and so we can all enjoy seeing what everyone else got. But these bags, said mom and dad, all needed to be opened at the same time.

We dove into our bags and what do you think was there?! A doughboy! We all got a doughboy! We took out our doughboys and raised them above our heads and we were all saying doughboy over and over again. And the happiness of three kids getting doughboys is today’s Picture of the Day:

Now we all have a doughboy and don’t have to fight over who gets Dad’s doughboy. As my brother said, there probably wasn’t any other home in the world where three kids got doughboys and experienced the same kind of happiness we did.

I should probably note that before writing this entry I did approximately three minutes of internet research, and if the internet is to be believed, the proper term is dough box. But you can try all day to talk me into that, and I will insist on calling my present a doughboy. That’s just the way it is.