Stuffed Animals

My younger sister loves animals. She has always loved animals. When my mom would go walking every morning, pushing her in the stroller, my sister whenever she saw a dog would ask the owner for the name. My mom knew everyone by their pet’s name because of that. Not only did my sister love real animals, she loved stuffed animals. She actually would take our stuffed animals and say they were her own, especially if they were dogs. When the local Shopko went out of business my mom purchased several collars since my sister wanted to put them on her animals. Mom found her purse strap missing one day and soon realized my sister had taken any strap she could and attached them to the collars so that she could drag the animals on a walk. My sister’s favorite animal was a large dog who she dubbed “Barky” and the other four dogs (and I think one cat) were aptly named “Barky Two” “ Barky Three” etc.

When I was in high school and going on school trips I always got sick. I don’t know if it was because I wasn’t use to eating out every meal (my family rarely ate out) or the odd hours I kept but it was always miserable the last day coming home. On one of the trips I swiped my sister’s teddy bear because he was soft and just the right size. (I had stuffed animals but none of them were bears or nearly as cuddly.) That year I received a teddy bear for my birthday. I named him Chester and my sister was happy when I took him on the trips instead.

When my little brother broke his ankle he was miserable for several days and I ended up loaning Chester to him since he wanted something to hold. My little sister decided that it was time he had a teddy bear as well and the two of us managed to find a cute one. He ended up naming Touchstone since we saw “As You Like It” that year at the Shakespeare Festival. It was exciting for him to sit in an aisle seat and have his leg propped up on a little camping stool and wince as the actors ran up and down the aisles during the play.