Anybody else obsessed with Punch?
You know...the internet's favorite tiny emotional support monkey...who has also somehow become my emotional support monkey...your emotional support monkey...everyone's emotional support monkey.
I seriously watch every single video I see of him. 😍 It got me thinking...it isn't just because he's cute AF. If it were, we'd all be equally obsessed with every fluffy creature on the internet...and we're not.
Punch's story hits different. Know why?
It's not simply because of his adorable little face and mannerisms, although they do a lot of the heavy lifting. It's more about the story wrapped up inside those tiny hands clutching his stuffy like it's the last stable thing in the universe. It's the attachment behavior. It's very human, very familiar, and closely resembles the way human babies cope with a world that feels a little too big. We've all been that baby.
I mean, we haven't all literally been abandoned at a zoo (hopefully), but we've all been dropped into a world we didn't understand and been completely dependent on other people to regulate every aspect of our lives. Our parents had more to do than spend every single moment wrapped around us, so at some point we had to start figuring out how to self-soothe.
That's when they gave us "the thing". OUR thing.
For me, it was my Wolfy. When I say my Wolfy, I mean MY Wolfy - that nasty old thing was my very first ride-or-die. I took him EVERYWHERE.
He wasn't some cute, palm-sized stuffy I could stuff in my mom's purse. He was huge...bigger than me...inconveniently large. I still remember my dad saying, "Do we really need to bring that?" That was when I learned the importance of effectively communicating my "non-negotiables."
At one point, my parents actually tried to replace him with a replica Wolfy 😲- and I think they may have eventually succeeded, but only because I had literally loved him to pieces.
To me, Wolfy wasn't a toy. He was familiarity, consistency, and he was mine. That's what Punch has with Momo-chan. The way he holds onto his mommy isn't only cute, but also instinctual. It is how he copes, grounds himself, and makes sense of all that's going on around him. Whether we realize it or not, we've all done some version of that.
Maybe it was a stuffed animal, maybe it was a blanket, maybe it was a pacifier, or something completely random. Whatever it was, I'm willing to bet most of us had something that was ours and made us feel safe and comforted.
