When I was a small child, starting at about age three or so, I had a little posse of stuffed animals that went everywhere with me. There were three of the – a little pink and white, blonde-haired rag doll named Annabelle; a lion with bright red hair that stood out when you shook it named Redhead; and a panda puppet cleverly named Panda. These were not just stuffed animals – each had a life and personality of its own. Annabelle was my little companion, my best friend. She was savvy, outgoing, and knew how to get her own way. She had pink and white checkered “skin”, a little mouth made of a piece of pink string, and blue-black eyes made out of little circles of satin cloth. Her blonde hair was made out of yellow yarn that was tied into two little buns on the sides of her head, kind of like Princess Leia. I played with her so much that periodically her arms and legs would fall off and my mom would sew them back on – because, after all, she was a rag doll. I once put Band-aids on her arms and legs, because I was concerned that she was hurt, and to this day she still has brown marks on her where the sticky stuff was. I brought Annabelle to school with me until the second grade, when it became decidedly uncool to be seen with a doll. My real-life best friend and I would play with her on the playground – when it was wintertime, we slid her around on the ice, as if she were ice-skating. We would make little dresses for her and had a little bed for her inside my desk at school for when it was time to actually pay attention in class.
Redhead was a very shy little guy – he was very wary of any new toy that I would get, and was especially frightened by dogs. He was a fuzzy white lion with bright red hair, and had a little green and white cloth candy cane that he held between his hands, sucking on it in his mouth. His hair was originally probably very fuzzy, but is now worn down into almost dreadlocks. Back then, if you shook him back and forth very fast, his hair would stand straight up on end – my mother did this often, because right away I would flatten it down again and say “No no no no no!” She would then shake him again and I would flatten his hair, and this would continue on for what seemed like hours but was probably only a few minutes. This was all part of my bedtime routine, as was talking to Panda.
Panda is probably the one representative of this group that brings back the most memories for me. He was a simple piece of furry cloth, black and white, with little ears and a little face. He had a piece of pastel yellow yarn around his neck, but that is now long gone. He was always alive, waking up when my mom would put him on her hand (as he is a puppet) and have him talk to me. He would always sleep right in my arms, the only stuffed animal that I technically slept with as a child, though most of them (there were many more) were on my bed somewhere. My bedtime ritual would always include my mother reading a book to Panda and me, and then Panda would suddenly wake up and start talking! It was never my mother talking through Panda – Panda was of course alive and talking all by himself. He would be sitting in my arms, looking up at me, asking very quietly and unsurely if he could sleep with me, and I would say “Maybe…maybe…Yes!” and he would leap out of my arms towards the ceiling and squeal with joy. Then I would say “well, maybe not…” and he would cry and say “well…okay…” and I would say, “oh, of course you can” which caused him to again leap and squeal. He had sad little eyes, and was very shy, but more in a quiet, curious way than scared of the world like Redhead. My mother would also have him say “S’Alright? S’Alright!” like Senor Wences from the Ed Sullivan Show – but of course, to this day, I think of Panda when I hear those words, and not Senor Wences, since I wasn’t even alive when that show was on television. Panda would also say “STAINMASTER!” which I believe was or still is a carpeting brand name that I apparently found hilarious. I can remember the feel of him in my hands, feeling the “bones” inside his little body (in actuality, my mother’s hand), his little voice, and how disappointing it was when the time came for me to go to sleep, and my mother would slip her hand out of his body and give me a kiss good night. Panda would sit patiently as I read my books, as I would do for hours and hours into the night in elementary school, and never complained when I dragged him around to various sleepovers at my neighbor’s house.
That reminds me of a very funny – in retrospect – situation that happened when I was about five or six. When I was younger, my mother worked the night shift at the hospital and would send me to my neighbor’s house when I got home from school so she could rest, after being up all night. My neighbors were a family just like mine, with two girls, Robin, who was my age, and Lauren, who was around my younger sister Caitlin’s age. I had of course brought my little entourage along, because in those days, I went nowhere without them. We had been playing in Robin’s bedroom, and I can’t quite remember the details, but I believe I left my little buddies under her bed as we ran off to play in the back yard. Well, time passes and it’s time for Caitlin and I to go home. We had to walk ALL the way through Robin’s back yard, the neighbor’s between us, and then our back yard into our house. Since my sister was about two and a half, I felt a huge sense of responsibility leading her through the yards. I ran and grabbed my backpack – accidentally leaving behind the stuffed animals – and off we went. I didn’t give a thought to Panda and the others until later that night – when Robin’s mom called and said that I had left them. Well, me being distracted by who knows what said something along the lines of “oh, they’re having a sleepover with Robin’s Cabbage Patch doll, Fanya; they can stay there!!”
Of course, along comes bedtime, and I am wrought with tears and it is just horrible. How could I possibly go to sleep without Panda?! I remember it being terribly late and dark outside – it was probably only 8:30 – but I felt like I was staying up til all hours, absolutely distraught over this dilemma. My dad finally had to go over to Robin’s house and rescue my little posse. This is somewhat symbolic of my own experience with sleepovers around the same time – I would go over to a friend’s house, excited, and then somehow in the middle of the night, right before I was going to sleep, I would get really sad and homesick, and have to wake up the parents of the person I was staying with and ask them to call my parents. I remember my dad walking me home from Robin’s house one of these times, in my blue Carebears nightgown with a rainbow on it, in the dark, along the road (we lived out on a dirt road where there were no sidewalks), and being so happy that I was going home. My fear of sleepovers became sort of a private joke amongst all of us, and when I was older, Robin’s mom told me how upset Robin always was that I never stayed the night. I suppose it was just a bad case of separation anxiety!
I can remember getting older and feeling guilty for leaving Panda on my bed, or strewn on the floor, as I ran off to sleep over at a friend’s house. He still had feelings, but I was starting to grow up, and didn’t need him as much any more. I would push him under my pillow or under my bed so as to avoid his sad eyes and the extreme guilt that I felt because I had neglected him. I eventually stopped feeling so guilty, but even now I have to remind myself that he is a stuffed animal, with no feelings. That still doesn’t help sometimes, but I try. I brought him, along with my huge collection of stuffed frogs, to DePaul with me, and I still sleep with him most nights, at least somewhere in my bed. I have a frog named Herbie that I got from FAO Schwartz that I sleep with, too, and sometimes I feel bad when I give one more attention than the other.
Maybe I’ve gone nuts.
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