Stuffed

Monday 15 April 2013 - Filed under Touch + Writing

Maybe I’m an overgrown kid, but I still love to touch stuffed animals–just not the stuffing. When I was a preschooler my puppy chewed up my little Raggedy Ann doll all over the yard, and I was the first to find a chunk. At seven, a foe and a friend had a fight over her plump panda which she lost. He wound up in tatters and fluffs all over the play room floor at the school for the blind in Austin. I admit it, I am tactually defensive to cotton and tears of cloth. It’s weird because, before those encounters, I had lots of fun in my grandmother’s cotton field with my own little bag. I took persistent pleasure in grabbing the fluffy stuff when I found an open bowl.

Now, if one of my flock gets a tear, I’m fast with the safety pin or needle and thread. Corduroy, fleece, parachute material, or leather are my favorites for skin and fur. Rocky Raccoon, Ollie the Elephant, little Foo Foo Bunny, and that famous “big blue frog” flaunt their big ears, big eyes, trunks and tails to my delight.

Don’t bring me those pillow types. I want something identifiable. Let me see that curly tail so I know it’s a pig or that stand-up mane so I know it’s a horse. Sometimes one of my guys like the University of Texas longhorn or the Kentucky wildcat goes home with an adoring fan. A few have wind-up music boxes; switches that make them purr and meow; and a couple of my new prospects, a hedgehog and a giraffe, will have scent packs that slip inside them through a zipper. There’s a cat that smells like a gardenia, and a pig that smells like pomegranate–better than the natural alternative, right?

I don’t put them all in one big playpen, although that would be fun. They’re scattered around the house, doing their own thing and getting my attention one at a time.

2013-04-15  »  Marilyn Brandt Smith