The Belly Button

Ella's belly button came off today with a little help. Bobchi tells me that I'm meant to keep it ("For good luck!").

Bobchi knows something about this, as I found out first-hand. One day, while cleaning out a bedroom closet at her place, I came across an old and dusty toolbox. Flipping back the lid, I came across a small cloth bag that was tied up with string. My curiosity peaked, I pulled the string off and up-ended the bag into my hand. Out dropped a shriveled bit of yellowed... something.

"What's this???" I asked, turning it over in my fingers and examining it closely.

Bobchi smiled. "It's Carol's belly button."

Now, I wouldn't call myself an obsessive compulsive -- yet. But I'm just waiting for some incredibly creepy-crawly germy rotten disgusting thing to come along and push me over the edge into full-blown germaphobia. Something, for instance, like accidentally touching plus-fifty-year-old human jerky.

So you might understand, then, why my reaction to this bit of information was something to the effect of: "Gaaaauuuugggghhh!!!"

Bobchi and Carol quickly told me that this is quite a common practice (in this neck of the woods, anyhow). Carol even has the carefully preserved bellybuttons of all three of her girls tucked away on a closet shelf. What she's planning to do with them, I haven't the foggiest, but they're there in case anyone ever needs them.

So now Julie is saying she might like to keep Ella's bellybutton, too. Carrying on the family tradition of embalming, I suppose. In any event, it looks like this little bit of Ella might just be hanging around (creepily) as long as she does.