Paddy the Incredible
He was a small, brown bear cub who stood on all fours (before he suffered from acute joint degeneration) much like the type of bear you would see in a museum, only softer and significantly less threatening. So, in more ways than one, Paddy was not what you would call a “traditional” teddy bear.
Paddy was my constant companion between the ages of three and six. We spent our summer days playing outside under the willow tree and my brother, Alan, managed to incorporate him into all of our imaginary games. At night I simply refused to go to bed without Paddy. In fact, there was a period when my parents spent close to an hour every evening helping Alan and I round up our stuffed animals.
After a while my dad got really sick of the nightly search and rescue delaying bedtime, so he decreed that each of us could pick ONE stuffed animal to sleep with and that was IT. Of course I chose Paddy – there was no contest – but I felt cut to the heart about all the other animals I had rejected. Also, if I recall, the rationale behind this new “one animal rule” was never clearly explained. I just assumed that (for some sick reason) our dad was testing our loyalty to the stuffed animals by forcing us to rank them.
One night after Dad tucked me in, I stealthily snuck out of bed, tip-toed across the room, and picked up one of my new dolls. With my eye trained on the door I quickly hugged her, dropped her on the floor, and scurried back underneath the covers. I was plagued with the fear that my father would somehow sense what I was doing and “discover” me. I pictured him bursting through the door, pointing his tyrannical finger in my face and screaming, “You chose Paddy! How DARE you shower your affections on someone other than your CHOSEN animal!”
The point is that selecting Paddy as my most devoted companion was not an easy choice, but it was an obvious one. Without him, life was simply unbearable. That’s why there was no question about his coming to kindergarten with me, even though I wasn’t quite sure how to incorporate him into my school routine.
Alan and I walked to school every morning wearing matching red jackets; we were both required to hold on to opposing ends of a stick so that he wouldn’t lose me. I had a green drawstring backpack with “Slater Gators” painted on the front, and that was Paddy’s preferred method of travel. Every morning I put him in the backpack (leaving his head out so that he could breathe, of course) and the three of us marched off into the unknown with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation. Once we arrived at school, my brother stopped where the sidewalk divided our grade levels and he hugged me goodbye. I reached behind me and touched Paddy’s reassuring paw through the backpack, while I watched Alan walk further and further out of sight.
Everything about kindergarten was stressful and confusing. I rarely had anyone to play with and nothing they did there made any sense. Worse yet, I was required to leave Paddy in my backpack, hanging on one of the coat hooks, because the grownups said he was somehow capable of interfering with my learning.
The only time I got to be near him was when we did an activity with the water table, which was situated near the coat hooks. I don’t remember what it was actually called, but the table had a removable lid and was like a bathtub inside. Our teachers filled it with water so that we could sail little boats we had made out of paper. “Why are we doing this?” I thought to myself. “Isn’t my boat made out of paper? Isn’t it going to sink?” I glanced desperately at Paddy. He just stared back at me, stiff-necked. His arms and legs were trapped in the backpack, leaving him completely incapacitated and unable to offer any help or reassurance.
Further out, in the center of the room, there was a pretend kitchen. A red-headed boy was standing in the middle of it screaming that the oven was about to blow up. My internal monologue began to panic. “Why don’t the adults get us out of here?” it said. “Don’t they know this place is about to explode!” I shot a quick glance across the room to where Paddy was incarcerated, and I hastily assembled a plan for how I would rescue him from the perilous flames.
Strategic plans to rescue my teddy bear from fire became the preoccupation of my kindergarten year. One particular instance stands out in my memory. We were required to do numerous fire drills, one of which took place on a school bus. The grownups weren’t taking us anywhere. They rented a bus for the sole purpose of the drill. (This, of course, was never explained to me.)
As soon as we lined up at the door my heart started pounding with anxiety and the internal monologue started raving again. “There’s a school bus outside. Where are we going? Are we ever coming back? Am I supposed to just leave Paddy here? What if that poorly-wired cardboard kitchen explodes and he dies in the perilous flames?” Somehow I managed to covertly run over to the coat hooks and take Paddy out of my backpack.
The entire kindergarten class marched outside and boarded the school bus. I had never been on a bus before. The big green seats smelled like old leather and were marked with a generation’s worth of oily thighs. There were no seat belts and my feet didn’t touch the floor, but once I managed to get settled I started to feel rather content. “This is pretty neat,” I thought, kicking my legs back and forth. “I wonder where we’re going.”
I happily stared out the window with Paddy tucked under my arm while our kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Barnhill, stood at the front of the bus babbling at us – something about how if there were ever a fire on the bus we would have to leave all of our possessions behind and jump out the back door. Unexpectedly, all the kids started getting up, walking down the aisle, and dropping off the back of the bus. I felt compelled to follow them, but as I got closer to the edge my heart began to race. I stared down at the pavement. It was at least a thousand-foot drop. Mrs. Barnhill was down there waiting for me, tiny as an ant.
“Come on, Alice! Jump!” she bellowed. “We don’t have all day!”
I choked back a few tears, clutched Paddy in my arms, and jumped. Amazingly, I survived. With a deep sigh of relief, my muscles began to relax and my legs turned to jelly. Suddenly I received a swift smack on the behind. Mrs. Barnhill was immediately in my face, red and yelling.
She jerked my arm. “What are you doing with this bear? I told you, in case of a fire, you’re supposed to leave all your possessions on the bus!”
“But there wasn’t a fire,” I stumbled, starting to cry. Even if there had been a real fire, did she honestly expect me to leave Paddy in there to die? I’m not sure how the conversation proceeded after that. I think she told me something about how my life was more important than my bear’s. I just stared at her – horrified. Clearly, Mrs. Barnhill would not cease in her plot to destroy Paddy. She probably concocted this whole “drill” just so the bus driver could take off with him and abandon him in some nondescript wheat field. I guess she won in the end, though. I didn’t bring my bear to school after that.
At Bible study last week we were talking about possessions, and we all had to name something we would hate to lose. For some reason Paddy immediately came to mind. I remembered how, when I was little, I often got scared at bedtime. Abandoned by my parents, left alone in a dark room, I fantasized that a blood-thirsty, psychotic monster was waiting outside to attack me while I slept. But I always told myself that, if I was ever threatened, Paddy would turn into a real bear and protect me.
Inevitably, Paddy and I drifted apart as the years went by. He stayed at my parents’ house when I went off to college, and that is where he remains to this day. Yet, if the oven somehow exploded and their house burned down, Paddy would be the one thing I would sorely miss (that is, assuming my parents made it out OK). Maybe it’s not even him, really, but I would miss the absolute, childlike assurance that someone out there is willing to stand by me at all costs. I can’t think of a single person I know who has been sat on, puked on, or cried on more than Paddy. That kind of devotion is rare, timeless and simply inexplicable.
Paddy was my constant companion between the ages of three and six. We spent our summer days playing outside under the willow tree and my brother, Alan, managed to incorporate him into all of our imaginary games. At night I simply refused to go to bed without Paddy. In fact, there was a period when my parents spent close to an hour every evening helping Alan and I round up our stuffed animals.
After a while my dad got really sick of the nightly search and rescue delaying bedtime, so he decreed that each of us could pick ONE stuffed animal to sleep with and that was IT. Of course I chose Paddy – there was no contest – but I felt cut to the heart about all the other animals I had rejected. Also, if I recall, the rationale behind this new “one animal rule” was never clearly explained. I just assumed that (for some sick reason) our dad was testing our loyalty to the stuffed animals by forcing us to rank them.
One night after Dad tucked me in, I stealthily snuck out of bed, tip-toed across the room, and picked up one of my new dolls. With my eye trained on the door I quickly hugged her, dropped her on the floor, and scurried back underneath the covers. I was plagued with the fear that my father would somehow sense what I was doing and “discover” me. I pictured him bursting through the door, pointing his tyrannical finger in my face and screaming, “You chose Paddy! How DARE you shower your affections on someone other than your CHOSEN animal!”
The point is that selecting Paddy as my most devoted companion was not an easy choice, but it was an obvious one. Without him, life was simply unbearable. That’s why there was no question about his coming to kindergarten with me, even though I wasn’t quite sure how to incorporate him into my school routine.
Alan and I walked to school every morning wearing matching red jackets; we were both required to hold on to opposing ends of a stick so that he wouldn’t lose me. I had a green drawstring backpack with “Slater Gators” painted on the front, and that was Paddy’s preferred method of travel. Every morning I put him in the backpack (leaving his head out so that he could breathe, of course) and the three of us marched off into the unknown with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation. Once we arrived at school, my brother stopped where the sidewalk divided our grade levels and he hugged me goodbye. I reached behind me and touched Paddy’s reassuring paw through the backpack, while I watched Alan walk further and further out of sight.
Everything about kindergarten was stressful and confusing. I rarely had anyone to play with and nothing they did there made any sense. Worse yet, I was required to leave Paddy in my backpack, hanging on one of the coat hooks, because the grownups said he was somehow capable of interfering with my learning.
The only time I got to be near him was when we did an activity with the water table, which was situated near the coat hooks. I don’t remember what it was actually called, but the table had a removable lid and was like a bathtub inside. Our teachers filled it with water so that we could sail little boats we had made out of paper. “Why are we doing this?” I thought to myself. “Isn’t my boat made out of paper? Isn’t it going to sink?” I glanced desperately at Paddy. He just stared back at me, stiff-necked. His arms and legs were trapped in the backpack, leaving him completely incapacitated and unable to offer any help or reassurance.
Further out, in the center of the room, there was a pretend kitchen. A red-headed boy was standing in the middle of it screaming that the oven was about to blow up. My internal monologue began to panic. “Why don’t the adults get us out of here?” it said. “Don’t they know this place is about to explode!” I shot a quick glance across the room to where Paddy was incarcerated, and I hastily assembled a plan for how I would rescue him from the perilous flames.
Strategic plans to rescue my teddy bear from fire became the preoccupation of my kindergarten year. One particular instance stands out in my memory. We were required to do numerous fire drills, one of which took place on a school bus. The grownups weren’t taking us anywhere. They rented a bus for the sole purpose of the drill. (This, of course, was never explained to me.)
As soon as we lined up at the door my heart started pounding with anxiety and the internal monologue started raving again. “There’s a school bus outside. Where are we going? Are we ever coming back? Am I supposed to just leave Paddy here? What if that poorly-wired cardboard kitchen explodes and he dies in the perilous flames?” Somehow I managed to covertly run over to the coat hooks and take Paddy out of my backpack.
The entire kindergarten class marched outside and boarded the school bus. I had never been on a bus before. The big green seats smelled like old leather and were marked with a generation’s worth of oily thighs. There were no seat belts and my feet didn’t touch the floor, but once I managed to get settled I started to feel rather content. “This is pretty neat,” I thought, kicking my legs back and forth. “I wonder where we’re going.”
I happily stared out the window with Paddy tucked under my arm while our kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Barnhill, stood at the front of the bus babbling at us – something about how if there were ever a fire on the bus we would have to leave all of our possessions behind and jump out the back door. Unexpectedly, all the kids started getting up, walking down the aisle, and dropping off the back of the bus. I felt compelled to follow them, but as I got closer to the edge my heart began to race. I stared down at the pavement. It was at least a thousand-foot drop. Mrs. Barnhill was down there waiting for me, tiny as an ant.
“Come on, Alice! Jump!” she bellowed. “We don’t have all day!”
I choked back a few tears, clutched Paddy in my arms, and jumped. Amazingly, I survived. With a deep sigh of relief, my muscles began to relax and my legs turned to jelly. Suddenly I received a swift smack on the behind. Mrs. Barnhill was immediately in my face, red and yelling.
She jerked my arm. “What are you doing with this bear? I told you, in case of a fire, you’re supposed to leave all your possessions on the bus!”
“But there wasn’t a fire,” I stumbled, starting to cry. Even if there had been a real fire, did she honestly expect me to leave Paddy in there to die? I’m not sure how the conversation proceeded after that. I think she told me something about how my life was more important than my bear’s. I just stared at her – horrified. Clearly, Mrs. Barnhill would not cease in her plot to destroy Paddy. She probably concocted this whole “drill” just so the bus driver could take off with him and abandon him in some nondescript wheat field. I guess she won in the end, though. I didn’t bring my bear to school after that.
At Bible study last week we were talking about possessions, and we all had to name something we would hate to lose. For some reason Paddy immediately came to mind. I remembered how, when I was little, I often got scared at bedtime. Abandoned by my parents, left alone in a dark room, I fantasized that a blood-thirsty, psychotic monster was waiting outside to attack me while I slept. But I always told myself that, if I was ever threatened, Paddy would turn into a real bear and protect me.
Inevitably, Paddy and I drifted apart as the years went by. He stayed at my parents’ house when I went off to college, and that is where he remains to this day. Yet, if the oven somehow exploded and their house burned down, Paddy would be the one thing I would sorely miss (that is, assuming my parents made it out OK). Maybe it’s not even him, really, but I would miss the absolute, childlike assurance that someone out there is willing to stand by me at all costs. I can’t think of a single person I know who has been sat on, puked on, or cried on more than Paddy. That kind of devotion is rare, timeless and simply inexplicable.
posted by Alice | 2:28 PM
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