TEDDY

****This post was inspired by "Art Dog's Life" post entitled "dear teddy*"***

As instructed in "dear teddy*," I gave my teddy bear a hug from dogfaeriex5. :) And as the above mentions, I was inspired to take a photo of him and tell his story.

My teddy bear's name is Teddy. (Obviously, not very original for a 5 year-old.) Nonetheless, Teddy was in fact my second teddy bear and not my first. The first I had when I was 4 year's old. I used to carry him around with me everywhere...and don't even remember whether or not he even had a name. But, he was a smaller bear, that would just fit in my 4 year-old arms. At that time, we were living in a complex of apartments in Westerville (as I was told.) I remember the complex vividly...how green everything was, (the grounds were maintained well,) and we all had patios enclosed by wood privacy fences. In the days when it was safe to run around without too much parental supervision we literally would bounce around from one apartment to another and play in the yard. There were so many of us kids that everyone's parents trusted the others to keep and eye and they always knew where we were. Our ages ranged from 3 - 12. One such kid, (I believe his name was Mikey,) was much older than I and we considered him the neighborhood bully. Not recalling clearly the circumstances that led up to the horrific ordeal, but Mikey and one of his friends somehow got a hold of my teddy bear and ripped him into pieces. Literally. I remember it like it was yesterday. They took him by each arm and just pulled... I can still see his stuffing flying everywhere. What a traumatic experience for a 4 year-old! I cried and cried for days... I was devastated. When I finally got my bearings I remember asking my parents for a new bear. And not just any bear, but "A GREAT, BIG, GIANT TEDDY BEAR." I would imagine that I got obnoxious about it at some point, and even eventually asked Santa for it. (It was summer when the other bear was destroyed...and we actually even moved that fall before my sister started kindergarten.) But, I was persistent. And too my grand surprise Christmas morning, I awoke to exactly what I had been wishing for over the past months... "A GREAT, BIG, GIANT TEDDY BEAR!" At the time, I was 4 days shy of 5 and he was nearly as big as I was when standing (I was only a head taller than he...)

Over the years, I took him very few places around other kids, in fear of something else happening. But, on most family outings to Alum Creek or to my grandmother's, there Teddy was in tow. My mother being as paranoid as she was about us bringing ticks back from the park would always wash him in the washer...and eventually he became flat, yet with very little wear. My brother was born when I was 12 and I remember us giving him a bunch of our stuffed animals (as loners), somehow, Teddy managed to stay on my bed... Shortly after I moved out when I was 18, my mother took it upon herself to restuff him as a surprise and even made him an outfit (of a pair of my little brother's old short...and a vest made by hand.) For the past 12 years, he's been traveling with me through my "adult" life... Always in whatever room I deemed my office, with my other stuffed animals (reacquired from my brother as he got older.) There he sits to this day beside my computer desk, amongst the others and still the biggest of them all...my "GREAT, BIG, GIANT TEDDY BEAR."