Create a lasting memory...

hype (hīp)
Slang.n.

1. Excessive publicity and the ensuing commotion: the hype surrounding the murder trial.
2. Exaggerated or extravagant claims made especially in advertising or promotional material: “It is pure hype, a gigantic PR job” (Saturday Review).
3. An advertising or promotional ploy: “Some restaurant owners in town are cooking up a $75,000 hype to promote New York as ‘Restaurant City, U.S.A.’” (New York).
4. Something deliberately misleading; a deception: “[He] says that there isn't any energy crisis at all, that it's all a hype, to maintain outrageous profits for the oil companies” (Joel Oppenheimer).

When the baby was a few months old, and his brother a smidge over four, I decided what we needed to do more than anything was Create a Lasting Memory. I got this fine idea from the My Little Hand in Yours Keepsake Kit, which promised we would create a lifelike replica and capture a memory we would cherish for a lifetime. The specific memory I decided to capture was my sons holding hands.

What the kit failed to mention is that the actual memory would be of the baby's shrieks of terror reverberating in the suddenly claustrophobia-inducing bathroom, the baby's hand, per the directions, kept firmly in ice cold water mixed with Precious Gel Powder, his wrist held absolute prisoner by his brother, who yelled nervously and repeatedly, "I can't hold him much longer, Mommy!" while Mommy answered through clenched teeth, "Don't let his fingers touch the edge of the Memory Bucket! Oh, God, why isn't the damn Precious Gel setting already?"

When we finally poured the Precious Stone into the Precious Gel Mold, what emerged was lifelike alright. Fingernails distinct, skin texture vivid, the poor baby's fingers splayed in horror while his brother's were holding on so forcefully, the tendons on the back of the child's hand were easily discernible.

Precious, indeed.