My Toy Story (2004-05-14)
I saw Toy Story 2 on TV the other day and thought of my own Toy.I was maybe twelve or thirteen when I found this giant Pink Panther
stuffed animal lying on top of a pile of garbage waiting to be
collected. He was the most beautiful thing I had
ever seen. He was made exactly like the cartoon character,
slender with long limbs and big hands and feet. I don't know how
tall I was then but he was almost my height, if not taller. Why
would anybody want to throw him out? He looked so perfect. I
snatched him off the trash and rushed him home. I didn't care
about his condition, I just wanted to rescue him. Once I had
safely snuck him into my room, I began to examine his "wounds". I
started to look for any torn patches on his body or loose stitches in
the seams. To my surprise, there was none. He was just
dirty, nothing a bath wouldn't fix. I gingerly told mom about my
new friend and begged her to let me keep him. She reluctantly
agreed and I was elated. I washed him thoroughly and hung him in
the sun for two full days before he became completely dry. I
found a pair of old green striped pajamas that belonged to my brother
and put them on him, they were a little short on his long arms and legs
but I thought they fit well. He looked absolutely adorable.
I called my new friend Goofy Panther, the Chinese translation of the
name Pink Panther. It was the happiest day of my life.
Goofy Panther became the most important part of my young
existence. I had never grown so attached and bonded to a soft toy
before. When I went home after school, the first person I talked
to was him. When I was at the desk doing homework, I would sit
him up on the bed to watch me and keep me company. I liked to
hold his big hands in mine and make funny poses of him and then laughed
myself silly. I snuggled with him every night under the covers
and told him about my other unimportant
friends at school before I fell asleep. Goofy Panther became my
buddy and my
confidant, he was the best thing that could happen to me.
Then one day I came home and raced to my bedroom as usual. I
couldn't wait to tell him about my day at school. But he wasn't
sleeping in bed like he should be. A sense of doom loomed over
me. I searched for him frantically everywhere and he was nowhere
to be found. I was so overcome with panic that I had forgotten to
ask others in the house his whereabout. I finally caught mom in
the kitchen and seeing her suddenly terrorized me. I asked the
dreaded question, "What happened to Goofy Panther?" She said,
"I threw it away." No explanation, just like that. My heart
seized, my throat closed, my skin exploded into a surge of goose
bumps. My guts were knotted in a hundred different places
strangling me inside. I stood there in the kitchen
facing the back of my mother in total shock and disbelief. I
couldn't utter a single
word. Life was over for me as I knew it. I simply went to
my room and wept. "But why?" I had later asked and was told it
was someone else's garbage to begin with and should be tossed.
There would be no more questioning, no talking back, no angry outburst
at my parents and absolutely no crying if I was to avoid a
whipping. Order in my family when I was growing up was brutal in
today's standard. That night I sobbed myself to sleep. It
was the saddest day of my life.
Toy or no toy, I lost my best childhood friend and an irreplaceable
friendship albeit an imagined one. For a long time I
trusted no one and I projected my
resentment toward people in general. It took me many years to get
over my anger. I don't know if this incident affected the way I
look at mankind-- I'll have to ask a psychoanalyst about that--but
I do like animals much more than I like humans. Even stuffed
animals are more loveable than people.
And I miss you, Goofy Panther. A lot.
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