Tegan was carrying this Teletubby around with all her little Doras today. I have no idea where she found it, but it has been with us for just over twelve years now. The reason I know its age is that it was one of a set of all four of them that adorned Spencer’s birthday cake the year he turned two. We lived in Worcester, Massachusetts then.

It has moved to 3 different houses (5 if you count the short time we lived at both my parents and my sister’s), and 3 different states. It spent a couple of months living in a camper at a seasonal campground while we paid off some debt to prepare for buying our first house. It moved across the country 5 1/5 years ago, and it has somehow survived many a house-wide toy purge.

Why, with all the odds stacked against it, has this cheap little plastic figure managed to keep itself so present in our lives, when I can’t even find the cup of coffee I set down 15 minutes ago?