for_old_time's_sake raze i still have my childhood stuffed animals. all of them except for hocus. hocus showed up after i had my tonsils taken out. i remember waking up to sick like i'd never known, hot and awful in my throat. i remember puking into a bowl and thinking i would never stop. it was the same kind of blue plastic bowl i ate popcorn out of at home. something about that was funny to me. the nurses who were maybe angels in white coats gave me cold jell-o. that turned the pain down to something i could handle. then my stepfather of all people walked in with hocus. the prettiest white stuffed animal rabbit. so soft. he felt like a blanket for my face. the fire in my throat went away. hocus stuck around. one day my dad was driving us somewhere. i was holding hocus out the window. it was a nice day. i wanted him to get some air. i lost my grip and he went flying. he bounced off the windshield and onto the road. my dad had to pull over and save him. too many trips through the washing machine took their toll on hocus. he fell apart. he wasn't around anymore when i made up my mind to rescue my stuffed animals from my mother's house. they were sitting on wood shelves nailed to my sister's bedroom wall. she never played with them. she had stuffed animals of her own. she wasn't going to miss a few of mine. when no one else was around, i grabbed odie, and scooby-doo, and baby oliver. i grabbed jiffy the giraffe, who was as old as i was. i hid them all in my suitcase. i would have grabbed teddy ruxpin, but i killed him when i was five. i killed him with a glass of orange juice. he looked thirsty. he looked hungry too. when my mother found us, he had a dorito hanging out of his mouth. i've still got those stuffed animals. they've mellowed in their old age, but every once in a while they tempt me into a great adventure for old time's sake. 210922 ... tender square my childhood stuffed animals live in a plastic bin in our cellar. - there’s theodore, my teddy bear who wears blue overalls. - a small, white kitty cat that was given to me by godmother when i was baptized. - my cabbage patch kid doll, thelma louise. she has blonde curly hair with white ribbons. she dons a red dress with matching pantaloons that were made by my grandmother. - a neon pink popple from the 80s that turns itself inside out and makes a strange, fuzzy half football. - there’s also my green glo worm, with the blue and white striped nightcap. he doesn’t light up anymore, but maybe that’s just a matter of batteries. - i have the turtle hand puppet i got from my aunt carol ann. she gifted it to me when i was eight and meeting her for the first time, after my mother tracked down my aunt’s adopted family in hamilton. - there’s the stuffed pink crescent moon with a sleeping girl sitting on it, a piece which used to hang in my nursery. i know there are stuffed animals i let go of; i used to have a tim horton’s timbit creature thing that looked like a bumble bee. there was also the small, white bear with the pink heart over its heart, the one that was gifted to me by my third-grade class when i was hospitalized for a week because of my asthma. there are some recent additions too. a trip to dollar tree yielded a sting ray a few years ago; michael and i adopted him, called him stevie. then, there’s the small panda bear we won at one of the local arcades, a running joke about lu lu the giant panda who successfully mated in 2015; in all the photos of lu lu getting it on, his partner, xi mei, looks like she can’t wait for his 18-minute love session to be over. in my office, i keep a small, stuffed corgi—a consolation gift from michael after we had to return our corgi, alistair, to the breeder. 210923 ... kerry hopping on the stuffed animal train here. some girls i used to care for (they called me a nanny, i hate that term) called them stuffies. i like that word. the older sister had an enormous collection of stuffies. mine lived in a hammock strung in the corner of my bedroom. big_bird was one of the first, though he had a cord you could pull to make him talk and after a while all he could do was gurgle. but i've got wraggles, a dog so scruffy you can hardly see his little black eyes all scratched with age. cutie bear--not named by me--had a huge head and tiny body, and has been crusty with drool for as long as i can remember. my favorite has always been the uncreatively-named Walrus. pink and white, with stained tusks. i took him with me to camp and to sleepovers, his little belly ripe with the smell of my mother's ralph lauren perfume. 210923 ... epitome of incomprehensibility There's photographic evidence that Ted and Vanilla were given to my mother at her baby shower. A white bear and a white bunny, same size. Sometime as I grew, they acquired names: Ted after "teddy bear" and Vanilla because Easter bunnies were chocolate, so a white one would be vanilla. Rocky was a white and yellow rabbit named after Rocky in the cartoon (that he was a squirrel didn't bother me). As I grew up, the names got more elaborate: Aquezalia, large white fluffy cat, was the mother of Tepretella, a smaller brown one with shorter fur. Inside Tepretella was a velcro'd pouch with a tiny kitten inside (manufacturer, did you confuse felines and marsupials?) I don't remember the baby's name. She was too small to really develop a personality. 210924 ... e_o_i Oh yes, and Ted and Vanilla were married. Don't ask me how that worked. 210924 what's it to you? who go blather from