Zoë has a stuffed bear with cherries on his bib, so he's named Cranbeary. He looks like a warning about the dangers of thalidomide; he's getting seriously worn at the seams. She won't sleep without him. Now Violet has a stuffed lamb named Grey-Grey. She picked him out at IKEA by screaming when Belle walked by the shelf. Now she won't sleep without him. Which brings you pretty much up to date ...
I was at IKEA today. They still have more Grey-Grey lambs. We could buy one ... in case anything ever happened.
Oooh, sort of The Velveteen Rabbit meets The Island, is what you're saying?
c'mon, this is a rational strategy. we could periodically swap out grey-grey 2 so he would get all filled up with love and pheromones. then, JUST IN CASE G1 were to get lost, we would be ready. I mentioned this strategy to Zoë and she says it just means we should be VEWY VEWY careful about "the Cranberrino".
Posted by: belle waring | October 03, 2005 at 09:15 PM
"Black Dog", who is the love of Sylvia's life, as well as her son/daughter/student/patient/whatever role the game calls for, has gotten nearly-lost more times than I can count now... I remember one really difficult night where we just couldn't find him/her at bedtime and Sylvia was bound and determined not to sleep without him/her, though we presented numerous alternative stuffed animals that she likes just as much we were sure. Ended up with me searching around the back yard in my pj's with a flashlight and then vainly trying to shake the sandbox sand out of B.D.'s coat before I brought him/her upstairs. So yeah, an indistinguishable backup would probably be a really good idea. Except I find it highly doubtful that Violet would not be able to distinguish between Grey-grey and the ersatz lambie.
Posted by: Jeremy Osner | October 03, 2005 at 10:06 PM
"Now she won't sleep without him. "
Hold on. These are male stuffed animals? Have you no shame? Senator Santorum shall hear of this depravity!
Posted by: Backword Dave | October 03, 2005 at 11:11 PM
BTW with regards to Grey-grey's name: Sylvia names all of her many stuffed animals by color and/or species: they are "Black Dog", "Pink Pony", "Lambie", "Horsie", ... and some are named only by their relationship to other, more principal stuffed animals, e.g. "Black Dog's Little Sister". (His/her other little sister is an exception to the rule, being named "Cutie-Pie". And B.D.L.S. oddly gets that name even in story-lines where she has a different relationship to B.D.)
I don't really remember giving names to my stuffed animals as a kid, and Sylvia's way seems kind of like not giving names -- the names are just descriptions.
Posted by: Jeremy Osner | October 04, 2005 at 02:26 AM
Also wondering about genderization of stuffed animals -- as I have tried to indicate above, Sylvia goes back and forth pretty freely between referring to B.D. with male or female pronouns; B.D.L.S. and Cutie-Pie are always (so far as I've noticed) female. I think most of the other stuffed animals can be either.
Posted by: Jeremy Osner | October 04, 2005 at 02:31 AM
All I can say is that I was heart broken when my first stuffed animal Timothy Mouse (whom I'm told was actually a stuffed cat, though I can't say I remember very well) lost his stuffing and went to heaven. I'll leave the moral of the story up to you.
Posted by: Matt | October 04, 2005 at 12:15 PM
So when my 20 yr old was 18 mos. we left in a cab for the airport and got most of the way there before realizing we didn't have "Mahni" (the blanket with the satiny ribbon around the edge). Naturally we told the cab driver to turn around and go back, since there would be hell to pay otherwise. The cab driver was incredulous, but it was cheap at the $50 price.
By the way, refurbishing the satiny binding was ok when it got shredded with wear. She actually seemed to need to rub the satiny fabric against her face while she went to sleep, and didn't mind that it changed. She still has the remains of Mahni in the back of her drawer.
Posted by: cafl | October 05, 2005 at 12:51 PM
I'm turning twentyone soon, but I still got to bring this little teddy bear along with me whenever I leave the country - and he's got to be in my arms from the moment we leave the house till we reach the hotel in whichever country. My parents are threatening to leave me at home the next time and just bring the bear :(
Posted by: vynara | October 05, 2005 at 05:58 PM
I'm actually in the midst of hand-repairing a much-beloved pair of stuffed rabbits. Callous friends have told me I could buy remarkably similar rabbits to replace them, but this completely misses the point. Even more callous friends have suggested buying the new rabbits, gutting them, and using their skins as replacement skins for the old rabbits. What is wrong with these people?
Posted by: Iron Lungfish | October 07, 2005 at 12:41 AM
I have friends whose little girl has a stuffed doll she calls "Baby." It's a very simple doll that was put out by Evenflow. They wound up buying a spare on eBay, and successfully swapped Baby 1 and Baby 2 for well over two years, thus avoiding anxiety over potential loss-induced stress, and allowed for regular laundering.
I had a blanket that I called my "Mati" because I couldn't pronounce "schmate" which is Yiddish for rag and what my neigbor who babysat for me called it. When it got irredeemably frayed, my mom made a stuffed animal and let me watch while she put my Mati inside the animal. I then carried the animal everywhere.
There are many creative approaches, but I think it would be prudent to procure Gray-Gray 2 while you can.
Posted by: Larry B | October 07, 2005 at 09:42 AM
My parents actually did purchase two bears for me when I was little. They would rotate them out--I never had the dreaded "washing machine and dryer" anxiety which haunts so many to this day: I had my "bear" whenever I wanted it, because while one tumbled, the other was snug in my arm. This strategy worked until I was given a stuffed dog for my third (fourth? second?) birthday. There was only one, and could only ever be only one (no beheadings to follow), since eBay (or, for that matter, the internet as we know it) hadn't been invented yet. Anyhow, I had named this dog "Bambi" for reasons mysterious until recently. "Why was Bambi a dog?" I asked my mother. "Because you couldn't tell the difference." Oh...
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | October 10, 2005 at 03:29 AM
At least vaguely relevant to this thread, and funny, too: The Easter Bunny
Posted by: Jeremy Osner | October 10, 2005 at 05:13 AM
Yikes. "I am the Resurrection and the Wubba."
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