My stuffed animals

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Chronologically,

Booboo

Given to me before my fourth year, Booboo is my oldest friend. If you boiled his ears, the salt content would be stronger than that of the Dead Sea. Because of my overwhelming affection and curiosity, his music box (Brahms' "Lullaby") has not worked for years, his tongue lasted not much longer than that, and his various joints have been multiply stitched. The only part of him with anything close to his original plush is where his hind legs meet his body. His name was originally Yogi, but I changed it when I received a larger bear for my fourth Christmas. That the bigger bear got the supposedly better name means nothing: he was called upon for the ultimate sacrifice, his tummy, when Booboo's threatened to split after his twentieth birthday. I love Booboo. I told my college roommate she could stain my clothes, rip my books, scratch to my records, but if she touched my bear I would kill her a slow and painful death. And I meant it.

All the others of my childhood

Sacrificed. Gone. Melvin the Raccoon, Pokey the Polar Bear, Flower the Skunk, Gilligan the Smaller Panda, Oliver the Larger Panda, Iceberg the Penguin, Heart the Dog, Leo the Lion, Beanie the Bear (and "the Professor and Maryanne," or the alternate "and the rest"). All gone.

Opus

The regular, small, no-accessories Opus, down-to-earth and big-nosed, was a gift from 3SK in late high school.

Banzai

Banz is the only animal I have written an essay about (a character study for 100.296). I received her for my 21st birthday, along with six months of car insurance, a ten-year-old Dodge Omni, an engagement ring (from my grandmother, and engagement only because of what finger I wore it on), the nickname Buckaroo (because I hadn't yet mastered a standard transmission), and a ticket to "Cats." Of course not all from one person, but all these things still belong together. Fugly (the two-tone (maroon and beige) Omni), Banzai, and I were a team that summer, my most independent yet: carful and manless and working a reasonably-paying job (relatively, for me). Fugly's name is obvious and well-deserved; Banzai's takes more explanation. Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "Cats" is based on T.S. Eliot's Practical Book of Cats, in which Eliot discloses that every cat has three names: an everyday name, a special name, and a name known only to the cat itself. Banzai might be a platypus (in cunning outback gear), but she has three names too. Her everyday name is Banzai, the other half of my Buckaroo ("Buckaroo Banzai" being quite the good flick); her special name is Sabrina, for the character in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" who always wears a hat (though she doesn't in The Unbearable Lightness of Being); and of course I don't know the name known only to Banzai herself. I do not drive without Banzai, have never, and will not: only together do Buckaroo and Banzai make a complete character. Whenever she is my only passenger, she sits in the front seat with the box and the tunes (I haven't had a car with a stereo yet) and the maps and is my deejay and my navigator. When I was in school and she lived in my room with me, she had a way of gazing at me in my late-night writing jags and inspiring me, which is how I came to write that character study.

Morse

Sometime around my 22nd birthday, I was at DEW's house. I complimented her on the comfortable looking bear in her living room. Maybe because she's my grandmother and loves me, maybe because it was my birthday, maybe because she knew I'd get to know him better than she would, she gave him to me on the spot (and I did protest that she couldn't give up her own bear, but she insisted more). I was glad to adopt him, because I had been looking for a bear that I could sleep with (Booboo is too delicate). I named him Morse, because my grandmother's nickname is Dot.

Tigger

In the fall of 1990, I realized my Tigger persona in full and bought a small silver (Shepard of course) Tigger as a talisman. One day soon after while at the mall with SSP, and two other friends, I had either made myself quite clear or SSP had read my mind. Though Jonas thought to conceal the Disney bag in the camouflage of a Gap bag, I spotted Tigger's orange plush well before SSP's intended Date of Giving (our anniversary, pro'ly). No one would describe me as patient.

Madeline

I played Madeline at a children's book fair. The sad thing was that most of the children knew me through the television shows based on Madeline and so were asking me about escapades I didn't know at all. Somewhere out there is a photograph of me sitting on the floor in my Madeline costume, surrounded by children, reading a later Madeline book that I also didn't know, leading me to say things like "And guess what I did next!" as I turned the page, because I had no idea. Let me assure you that reading through a Madeline hood-mask (like wearing a large jack-o'-lantern on your head), mostly mesh with inadequate screens before my eyes, while trying to maintain the illusion that my mesh was flesh, challenged me not a little. It was great fun though, plus I got to be Lyle Lyle Crocodile and received a book-and-doll set. Thus at the age of 24, I owned my first doll.

Hamlet

I hinted just about as loudly as I possibly could for Hamlet. I had met him while stocking books for Spring Semester Rush at the Co-op (January 1995), and here it was late February and RDC, who was on campus every day, had entirely failed to act on my hints. I worked in East Hartford at the time but, compelled by necessity, scurried to the Co-op just as it opened at 7:30 one morning and rescued Hamlet from its dusty clutches. I was particularly anxious for Hamlet because a bear I had needed five years before had been abducted by Someone Else before I could act--which is why I was so thrilled with Morse, whom I met three months after that, and why, I guess, SSP was so quick to pick up Tigger four more months after that. Anyway, I had selected another three-part name for the bear, Aloysius Makepeace Brandywine. Aloysius, for Sebastian's bear in Brideshead Revisited, and Makepeace for Thackeray and because it's a cool name anyway, and Brandywine for Tolkien. And I was going to name my newly rescued animal this long name, and showed him to RRP and asked her what she thought. The literary references didn't strike her, malheuresment, but she looked at Hamlet with his soft grey fur and his fake-leather tusks and big ears and said, "Well, actually he looks kind of melancholy." I baptized my new elephant Hamlet at that instant.

Arthur

RDC went to Arcadia National Forest (Park?) with JGW in May of 1995 and brought me back Arthur (as if he would make up for making me almost miss Hamlet). In the summer of 1988 one of my many jobs in Boston was a two-day stint as a clerk in a discount drugstore called Arthur Kent. Gave me the shivers. Among its tacky wares were numerous plastic lobsters. Arthur is not plastic, but he is a Maine lobster. 971006 Arthur ran away. He jumped out of my knapsack (he matched the red zipper pulls so well) and ran away. Arthur is gone.

Dickon

I had seen the Bear's Choice bears at shows before and pointed them out in high delight to Robin at Highgate (my last show, 10 June 1995). When RDC and I went to her and JGW's Fourth of July party three weeks later, Dickon was waiting for me, because Robin is one of the most generous people I know. I don't know how I had The Secret Garden on the brain, but if Robin is the Robin in The Secret Garden, then Dickon is the best of the other characters in that book.

Monty

RDC found Monty in Breckenridge and was actually able to keep me from him until Christmas Day (1995). Naturally I named him Montgomery on the spot, because of Monty Python (in the credits of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," we learn that moose bites can be very nasty). But CLH begged me to name him Murphy, because of her friend Peter whom she calls Moose. So he became Murphy Montgomery. Then I remembered the best "Fawlty Towers" episode: Basil has not hung a stuffed moose head in the lobby yet and has left it on the front counter. He has also just abused Manuel for his continuing inability to speak English, prompting Manuel to mutter to himself as he crouches behind the counter dusting: "I can speak English. I learn it from a book." And so the senile old Colonel, just walking by and seeing the moose head on but not Manuel behind the counter, of course thinks the moose head is doing the talking. So Monty became Manuel Murphy Montgomery (love those three-part names). And of course I had to honor Captain Kangaroo's companion, so my moose's full name is Mr. Manuel Murphy Montgomery Moose. But you can call him Monty.

Except she's labeled a laying moose, so Monty must be female. Ms. Manuel Murphy Montgomery Moose.

Lyle

Lyle Lovett Lizard. Lyle Lyle Crocodile. Lavender Lyle. Leisure Suit Lyle. HAO gave him to me for my birthday in 1999. Lyle sits on my monitor at home.

Babe

I bought a Gund Babe for CLH in April 1999 and seven months was enough time to delay my gratification. Babe sits on my monitor at work. When I'm really grumpy I put him on my guest chair and position it in the doorway of my cube with a sign, "Talk to the pig." (This happened only once. I do try to mask my insanity.)

Pantalaimon

Ever since reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, I have wanted to read Paradise Lost. No, I mean, wanted a stuffed animal to name Pantalaimon. Of course, having only one animal is problematic. When I saw the badger, I realized that this would be a good Pan for me: as a badger Pan forced Lyra to confront Iorek Byrnison; this badger has black and white markings (as have the best animals: magpies and penguins and South American tapirs, and even the AKC allows Labradors to have some white on their chests, although I prefer them without); and my dæmon might have settled as a badger, surly and skulky and fierce. Grrr.

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Last modified 26 December 2001

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