Prologue –
Years ago we (i.e. Halsted and I) amused ourselves with the tales of Neddy the bear. I have always had in the back of my mind the desire to recreate some of those stories for you. I have forgotten them all. So, as an extended wedding gift, I am writing 52 “Neddys,” one for each wonderful week of your first year of marriage. I will mail them in numbered envelopes each week or perhaps one or two or three at a time. Read them when you are together.
My Love Always,
Mooms
October 16, 2010
Neddy begins . . .
Neddy was not the most attractive bear in the bin. No little yellow raincoat with adorable floppy hat, no large bottom to stick out of honey pots in an endearing way, no snappy prose written by Dr. So-What to define his eccentricities. He was a bear who in a very straightforward way was loved and then retired.
At this particular juncture in time, he had a great coming together of mind and body, of love and desire or perhaps just expectation and fear. The only way he knew to put things right was to go on an adventure, for he was tired of lying there wrapped in tissue paper staring at a wrinkle.
“Pah!,” you say, because you are old. “Neddy bears cannot be tired or stare.” Well, due to an abnormality in the manufacturing process, this bear could. Some bears got an extra claw or a very sweet expression but Neddy received “reason.” He didn’t think much of it but every now and then it piqued his interest to move about. So this, the first day of whenever, he was moved into position for an extraordinary adventure.
You’re invited along. I will chronicle, for in the manufacturing process I was accidentally given a delightful psychic connection to Neddy. Go figure.
Week the first
Tissue paper surrounding a bear and tissue paper in a shoebox are very the same. The tissued Neddy fell behind the shoe rack and into a tissu-ey box on its way to somewhere else. After a good deal of bumping and scrumping, Neddy cleared his throat and said a mental, “Hello?” to the clump of tissue next door to his face. No answer. I am not a very good conversationalist, I have a teeny lisp and it makes me sound sloppy. I have bare patches where there used to be fur and one of my eyes is definitely drooping. I can fully understand why the clump is silent. I am no longer a “cute” bear and no one really wants to talk to me, or hug me or do anything with me. He gave one more little sad grunt toward the clump and went back to staring. If there were such a thing as stuffed bears with real tears, they would have been there.
Now, we know that Neddy was talking to a mule. Not a donkey-type mule but a shoe-type slipper (all frothy and pink, doncha know) and yet, one so very stubborn as to not be able to chat with anyone she thought beneath her beneath. Puh-leeze, she thought, a toy bear? Like I have the time to shoot the breeze with such a thing. Without another thought, she had made a painful contribution to Neddy’s downward spiral of insecurity.
The Upshot:
If you are cranky and stubborn and don’t answer the simplest interrogatory even from a worthless, beneath-you type of person, you are delivering a big steaming helping of insecurity to someone who may want to like you or even love you. Neddy is sad because of the mule. His first adventurous feeling in the world of new love is insecurity. This could have gone better.
October 23, 2010
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