Lethal Dose

Oh, it’s The Baby Jesus! I love The Baby Jesus … look at his precious blond curls. I like to use “The Baby Jesus” as compliment or a nickname, like when I say to the pup, “You’re just like The Baby Jesus, aren’t you?” Or sometimes, as an adjective: “Aren’t you just so Baby Jesus?”

Marky just emailed me: My protestant neighbor gal asked me at age 7, “Is that Shirley Temple? “

Now, The Baby Jesus ain’t no Infant of Prague - the ultimate drag queen! Marky’s grandma had one that she’d dress up in appropriate religious-seasonal outfits.

(Mark writes: My Polish Gram would scream at us kids if she saw us messing with her Infant of Prague doll, and playing “Imperial margarine commercial” with his little crown on our heads. She’d yell: “That doll is NOT a toy!”)

We also called the IOP “The Baby Jesus” but he was a different “Baby Jesus” than the blond cherub. A few years ago I came across an Infant of Prague shrine in, I think, Oklahoma. When I went in and told the woman I was from Boston, I thought she was going to genuflect. “There’s not many of us here,” she said to me in what I thought was a tone of relief. I stocked up on magnets and postcards.

The IOP statue in my parents’ bedroom was one early source of OCD for me, because my mother told me that it was given to them as a wedding gift (can you imagine opening that present up? I would have screamed!) and were told, “Always keep a dime under the Baby Jesus and you won’t end up in the poorhouse.” I compulsively checked under the statue to be sure the dime was there and we wouldn’t end up in the poorhouse.