I found this picture a few days ago and it got me to thinking about stuffed animals. My family has an almost overwhelming amount of stuffed critters in our house; everybody including my parents have a favorite that they've picked up at one point or another.
Stuffed animals have played a big role in my family. We are lovers of inanimate objects and even go as far to give our favorites funny, high pitched voices and revolving storylines about their "lives", which are quite lively and annoying to hear about at times. They are comforting to us whenever we are down, uplifting when things go right, and in general, more available than any one member of my family could be at a given moment.
This is a Pillsbury Doughboy puppet or "Bobo" as I affectionately know him as. Obviously this picture is of a cleaner, less worn doughboy. Mine was a Christmas present in the 4th grade and it is my treasure, the one thing I would save from the burning house scenario. I've always loved my Bobo but I left him behind when I moved to California. This was largely in part of my parents attempt to get my brother Earl to put down his stuffed octopus (see below) and grow up. Since I'm the oldest and my brothers naturally listen to me over our parents, they figured that if I did it, he would do it. It was a very difficult decision to make and I'm not sure it's doing any good at the moment.
This is "Big", my brother's stuffed Inky the Octopus. Big and Earl have a history together. One night, I had a dream about a big pink stuffed octopus and the next day when my Mom and I were out shopping, we found one and gave it to Earl for Easter. He was completely overjoyed and has since clung to the tentacles for dear life. Earl is almost 19 and will need to put it down soon but has yet to do so. Part of the reason is because I egg him on, playing around with the stuffed toy and we make up stories about the octopus (alot of which have to do with soft serve ice cream and cutting open people's stomachs...yeah, it's best I don't go into that one).
Polar Bear is Neil's stuffie and much like his sister and brother, Neil has given Polar Bear a foul mouth and gangsta signs to make with his hands. This bear has gotten him into quite a bit of trouble, even so much as to the point where my Dad cut off the head with a pair of scissors once and flung the decapitated body down the stairs. Neil was traumatized...little pieces of white fur flecked each of our stairs with the limp, lifeless body at the foot...I laughed as did everyone else. Mom sewed it on a few days later but the message remains the same: don't piss my Dad off or else it's your head.
Snowman is Ethan's and while he does love his stuffie, he isn't compelled to give it a dirty sense of humor (Neil), an endearing nickname (me) or cling on for dear life (Earl). Ethan is an interesting kid...my parents say that he is following right in my footsteps which I like to hear very much. He is going through a ventriloquist dummy stage right now and makes his own dummies with wooden sticks and realistic eyes from craft stores and paper bodies that he designs.
This is the Karl Lagerfeld teddy bear, retailing around a cool thousand bucks. I like Karl Lagerfeld but I really detest teddy bears. If you are a relative or a friend of my family and you do not take the time to get to know us well enough and give us a teddy bear you'd think we'd "like", said bear will find it's way to a garage sale.
This would sell me more if instead of a teddy bear, there was a stuffed ghost or something of that nature.
