A Thousand Times No

Huzzah, it’s November 30th! I made it through National Blog Posting Month for another year. This morning I went to peek at the completion badges, and had to laugh when I saw them:

It’s our buddy Poppin’ Fresh, better known as the Pillsbury Doughboy — quite possibly to most beloved white guy to come out of Minnesota, ever.

The earliest memory I have from childhood involves none other than this puffy icon. I was about two or three years old, and I recall asking my mother not to use a knife to pierce the wrapping on a tube of Pillsbury dough because she might hurt the Doughboy. (The Pillsbury commercials of that era always opened with an anonymous hand thwacking a dough canister against a countertop, liberating an understandably exuberant Poppin’ Fresh from his economy seating.) My mother promised me she would be careful, and gently pushed a knife into the diagonal seam of the canister.

Pop!

[Silence.]

I eagerly waited for Poppin’ Fresh to emerge. And waited. And then I burst into tears. “Where’s the Doughboy? Why didn’t he come out? What happened?” I was completely beside myself.

My mother tried to console me. My father stepped into the kitchen to see what was the matter. They both spent a lot of time talking to me about the difference between commercials and reality.

And that, dear readers, is the first conscious recollection I have: marked for life by the primal No of the Pillsbury Doughboy.

As I grew up, I stopped expecting him to pop out of the wrapper. Now, older still, I realize that he’ll never jump out of a canister — but everyone once in a while, he still manages to turn up and make your day.

Congratulations to everyone, bloggers and readers alike, on making it through NaBloPoMo 2007!