Stuffed animals and childhood memories
I am not sure if I am going to earn brownie points in the blogosphere or lose them with this post, but being at my Mom’s house has a way of bringing me back to my childhood. And since I am away from Vancouver, and I figure my YVR peeps would want to know how I’m holding up, here is something you can now learn about me that even HZ (who is one of my very closest friends) didn’t know.
I have a stuffed animals collection. Yes, I do. To me, stuffed animals are more than a cute token of appreciation. They have extreme symbolisms and signify my links to memories that I have created and cherish. I debated for long whether to include a photo of my stuffed animals collections (given that I tend to be rather private) but I figured “what the heck, why not“. If I take flack and I’m criticized for it, so be it.
This is a small subset of my whole collection. When I saw a recent post by Beth Snow on stuffed brain cells, I knew exactly what I wanted for my next stuffed animal (I don’t have any in my Vancouver apartment) – I want one of the Giant Microbes collection.
Photo credit: Dr. Beth Snow on Flickr.
Why do I keep my stuffed animals? Well, for starters – I have nieces and nephews. They play. With toys. They use them to play, and as long as they are careful and don’t distroy them, I’m good. On a different angle, I keep my stuffed animals to remind me of how happy a childhood I had. Some people keep rocks, other keep their stamp collection. I collect stuffed animals. So SUE me.
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Oh Dr. Raul, great minds think alike! I have a half written blog posting about all my stuffed animals that has been sitting in my Drafts folder for AGES! This is motivating me to get that finished.
And thanks for pimping my stuffed brain cell pic. Aren’t they cute all snuggled up together like that?
So you are into bears Raulie?
Aww. There’s a story for each one, isn’t there?
My fave of the Giant Microbes is Toxic Mold. Cute and fierce at once.
Raul,
Stuffed toys, hot wheels, antiques or cartoon characters are all good. For some, and won’t incriminate myself, it’s power tools. :>)
enjoy your break!
I had 3 pandas (well.. I guess I still have them but they are in Australia…) which I loved and treasured. There was a small, medium and big one.
ps – I am sorry to hear about your loss. My thoughts are with you and your family.
My stuffed animals only come alive (ie informed with meaning) at Christmas, but they include Paksu, a stuffed polar bear, and Mike, so named because he has a green toque like Mike on the Monkees. But no-one can say stuffed animals don’t have deep resonance; at least, no-one who’s studied Jung.
I have 2 stuffed animals. First one is ‘blue bear’ from my childhood. He’s currently covered in margarita mix from an ‘accident’ a few years ago and I haven’t thrown him into the washing machine yet. He sits up behind some boxes on a closet shelf.
The other is a small gray shark I bought while at Sea World earlier this year. One of the things in life I have always had a fascination for has been sharks and some of my handles are various words for shark so i thought it would be cool to have a small stuffed shark. I have a photo of him somewhere.
Those giant brain cell stuffies are pretty cool, though i don’t think I would personally buy one lol.
I used to have a collection of stuff animals too. A BIG one. I gave them all away in 2003. I sold and was moving out of my 1700 sq T/H and needed to massively downsize. The kid that lived across from me came to knock on my door and asked me if he could have the jumbo sized cat (won for me at the PNE) it came up to my waist. Anyway, my mom was sad I gave them away. I miss the E.T. doll.
I love it!
While visiting my parents some time during the sabbatical, Jakob came across one of my (many) animals – a teddy bear named Edgar. Ah, the memories!
I can’t have too many stuffed things because there’s a tiny part of me that believes they are alive and feel things. and I feel guilty when I can’t sleep with all of them every night, so I try to minimize and only have a couple.
when I was younger, though? whoa, nellie!
Melanie’s last blog post..Blogathon 2009!