Monday, August 17, 2020

Stuffies, Blankies, Lovies: the ride or die pals of childhood

JENN McKINLAY: Recently, my mom unearthed an ancient photograph of my brother’s best stuffie, Teddy, and my best stuffie, Spotty, lined up against a wall, looking rather like they were trying to stage a prison break. Can’t say that I blame them given that my brother and I took them on all of our misadventures and they certainly suffered for it. Tree climbing, camping, swimming in the Housatonic River, ice skating, you name it, our ride or die pals were always at our sides. My poor Spotty got so worn out - it might have been that fateful day we tied him to a skateboard and sent him down a hill into a pond that did it - I finally had to swaddle him in my pink blanket to hold all of his bits together. Yes, I doubled up as a blankie and a stuffie kid.



My hooligans carried on the tradition with H1 carrying Hair Bear everywhere he went and H2 soon joining the ranks with his wing man Woobie Dog. We frequently threw birthday parties for them, mostly so Mom (me) had an excuse to have cake for lunch. Quite a sacrifice there! Hair Bear and Woobie Dog traveled everywhere with us when the Hooligans were young. One of my biggest parental fears was that we might lose one of them en route to or from our summer house in Nova Scotia. Thankfully, this never happened. Also, I can not tell you how endearing it is to check on your teenage son when he’s going through a particularly tough time and find his stuffie back on his pillow keeping watch over his boy. (Sob). Believe me, there are days I wish I could drag Spotty and my pink blanket out of my Mom’s attic and have them watch over me. 



So, tell me, Reds , who was your companion as a child? Stuffie? Blankie? Imaginary friend? What was your source of comfort and companionship? Do you still have them?


RHYS BOWEN: I don’t remember stuffed animals as a toddler. I had a family of imaginary friends called the Gott family. Four sisters: Gorna Gott, Leur Gott, Googoo Gott and Perambulator Gott. They had to do everything with us. You can tell I was a weird and lonely child living only surrounded by adults.  I didn’t get my first teddy bear until my 21st birthday. I complained I’d never had one so my mum went to Hamleys on Regent Street to choose one. After about 24 bears were discarded the salesman said “ Madam, just what is wrong with these bears?”
Mummy looked surprised and said “we want a bear with a nice smile’”. So Henry Bear has a suitably bemused expression and I still have him! 


HALLIE EPHRON: I didn’t have a stuffie or a blankie. Closest thing was my Susie doll, a baby doll with a rubber head, arms, and legs, and a stuffed body. I pretty much wore her out.


My kids both had stuffies AND blankies. Naomi had a stuffed pig named Piggie. Molly a stuffed leopard name Spotty Leopard. And there was a little pillow (named Pillie) that went everywhere with one of them -- when we left on an airplane, it triggered a collective nervous breakdown. My daughter is so smart with her kids -- they’re both attached to blankies. Naomi has a cache of identical blankets and when one devolves into tatters (or gets left on a plane) she hauls out a replacement.


DEBORAH CROMBIE: I was a stuffie kid. No dolls, only stuffed animals. (I thought dolls were creepy.) My earliest memory is of being put down in my crib for a nap and playing with all my stuffed animals instead. The one that survived into my adolescence was Tigger. Not the Disney/Winnie the Pooh Tigger, just a stuffed tiger. 

My daughter had Horsey (a pale blue stuffed carousel horse) and a blankie, which was one of her baby quilts. I think she still has Horsey somewhere. He's very worn out! 


Deb's Bob
And I have Bob (which I've also given to Charlotte, the little girl in my books.) He's a floppy pale green elephant. I saw him in the window of a children's shop quite a few years ago and it was love at first sight. I have even stuffed him into my suitcase a few times for long trips, so he's an international elephant. (Who needs a wash, I think, but I always feel a bit cruel putting him through the washing machine. What can he be thinking?)


LUCY BURDETTE: the names of all these creatures crack me up!


I had a whole cast of stuffed animals, mostly cats, all covered in colored rabbit skin and fur. The original and most beloved was FUZZY WUZZY. After that Wuzzy Fuzzy, Tangerine, Mothball, Licorice and some others were added. I played with them with my sister Susan for hours--dolls too. I finally had to throw the entire lot out when I was living in Florida and roaches ate the fur leaving every one of them bald.


Hallie, your daughter is so smart. Our grandkids both have stuffies and there’s no sleeping without them. At the end of their visit in February, Henry’s stuffie disappeared. They spent 2 hours searching and finally had to leave for the airport. It was a rough two days and we still suspect that Dorothea threw it in the bushes...

One more thing I forgot to say--Lottie puppy has a stuffie now too. It has a little heart with a battery inside that beats like her mother’s did:). We give it to her at night, and when she’s done with it, I’m going to take it over...

Lottie's Snuggle Puppy
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I’d never even heard the word “stuffie” until recently. Such a strange word. I apparently had a blue blankie, which according to Mom, eventually just disintegrated and vanished into the ether--I wound up carrying a scrap of it. I had a Stieff horse, a fuzzy one called Cinnamon (guess what  color) and I was quite fond of him. Dolls, no. Agreed, Debs, I thought they were creepy. Weird eyes, just looking at you, expecting you to DO something, and I never understood what.  Mom says my passion was a white felt cowboy hat, which I insisted on wearing all the time, and would only take off in the summer when I got a straw one. 

A look alike for Hank's Horse

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My stuffie story is rather bland - I had Susan Bear, who traveled round the world with me, managed to survive the somewhat ruthless weeding out of old toys my mother did whenever we moved (military transport allowances aren’t generous) and ended up in the possession of Youngest. 

She is the true stuffie connoisseur - she has dozens, and I have so far been unable to persuade her to part with any of them. One is supremely special: Mr. Froggie, who was a gift from my brother and sister in law when Youngest was born. As near as I can tell, they have not spent a night apart since then - even when Youngest was in hospital for five days after her mandibular surgery last summer, Mr. Froggy sat guard on the windowsill. I have no doubt that if she's elected to the presidency of the United States (her current ambition) Mr. Froggy will take up residence in the White House as the First Stuffie.

What about you, Readers, what was your ride or die comfort object as a kid?

99 comments:

  1. I don’t remember Jean and I having any particular stuffie or blanket to carry around but my children all had blankets that I made for them when they were toddlers. And Cabbage Patch Dolls. My oldest granddaughter had a little stuffed lamb she carried everywhere; now her lambie sits on her dresser . . . .

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  2. I do have a small teddy bear that I still have, but I think I just called him Teddy. I don’t remember taking him everywhere, but I do have a photo of my brother and me (I was probably between 2 and 3), and Teddy is with me. I also had a Littlest Angel Doll I was quite fond of and who got a bit of a hair trim on Christmas Day from me.

    My daughter had a stuffie that was a puppy dog, and he was always just called Puppy. I don’t know why we weren’t more imaginative in naming our studies. But, Puppy had to go most everywhere with Ashley, especially if she was spending the night somewhere besides home. The funny story about Puppy is that I noticed when Ashley got up in the mornings (she was a small child/toddler at this time), there would be some pebble like objects in her bed. I noticed this for a few days, and then she spent the night at her grandparents’ house. I asked my mother-in-law to check and see if the pebble-like objects were there the next morning, and she said they were. I was wondering if my daughter had some strange objects coming from here and even thought about calling the doctor. Thank goodness my MIL called before I did anything to tell me she’d found a small hole in Puppy where the beanies were coming out of it and she had sewed it up. Yes, I felt really stupid. My son’s stuffie was less eventful. He had an Ernie (as in Bert and Ernie) stuffie and dragged it around everywhere. At least that one had a proper name.

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    1. Kathy, that's hilarious. Nice that your MIL cracked the case!

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    2. It’s a story we’ve laughed about many times in our family. Hahaha!

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  3. I did not know what a stuffie is. I’ve never heard that expression before. I had a blondish teddy bear and a giant panda as big as me. Unnamed. Mom got rid of them a few years later when she found out my little sister was allergic to stuffed animals. My son favored a blanket Mom crocheted for him. He brought it on car trips. Calamity struck when it got left behind at a motel at the start of a trip. We had to stop at the same place on the return trip to retrieve it. He also had an Ewok he slept with. I think we still have the blanket but the ewok may have moved on to newer pastures.

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    1. I loved my blanket. I would have been distraught had we left it behind anywhere.

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    2. Never heard “stuffie” before. And really don’t want to here it again. Like those of you who found dolls creepy, “stuffie” creeps me out.

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  4. I love this topic (and all the names!), but hadn't heard the term stuffie until now. I had my Topsy, who I think started out as a dalmation but lost his spots after a few years. He's had many surgeries to stuff the bits back in. The underside of his ears was, I mean, IS silky soft and got many strokings. He's sitting on the radiator behind me right now, with my Crime Bake lobster and my Agatha nominations on the wall. A place of honor.

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    1. Lovely that you still have Topsy and that you honour him among your current writing recognitions, Edith!

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    2. Aw, that's so sweet. All well loved companions should have such places of honor.

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  5. I'm having flashbacks! I had a blankie with a smooth silk ribbon binding that I remember stroking to soothe me. But my most treasured childhood "friend" was Sweetie Pie, a stuffed...I'm not really sure what she was, to be honest. There were others, all of which had to be positioned just SO at bedtime. But Sweetie Pie was my alpha stuffie. (Hank, I'm with you. "Stuffie" is a new word to me too.) I also had an imaginary friend named Linda who lived in our barn and who freaked my mom out a little. Mom couldn't comprehend imaginary friends and feared I might need therapy. Nope. It was just an early indicator of my future career choice!

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    1. Alpha stuffie - LOL! Linda sounds like the beginning of a spooky story...just sayin'

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  6. I had a stuffed Smokey the Bear that I had forever and another smaller teddy bear that was around a long time as well. I had an imaginary friend as well but for the life of me I can't remember what his name was nowadays.

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    1. Smokey the Bear was big on Saturday morning TV in the 70's. I remember the ads so well. "Only you can prevent forest fires." Lotsof pressure on us kids. LOL

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  7. "Stuffie" is a new term for me, too, but I'm a stuffie girl all the way. One of my earliest memories is of a white terrycloth star with jingle bells on each point. My sister and I had dozens of stuffies when we were kids, including a big, surprisingly uncuddly teddy bear named Bear, and a homemade sock horse named Galloper Brighteyes.

    I still have many of them, and I've expanded my collection as an adult. A couple of years ago, when I drove solo from Texas to North Carolina and back, I had planned to take one of my dogs along for company, but that didn't work out at the last minute. I stopped at a Books A Million in Texarkana, and for the rest of the trip I enjoyed the company of a white wolf puppy stuffie named Jackson.

    I still have Bear, by the way. He's pretty worn, but basically intact. Just after I moved here, my niece was helping me settle in and spotted him. "You brought the Scary Bear?" She was appalled. Turns out he'd always been in her room when she visited my mother's house and she thought he was creepy.

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    1. I think I'm in love with the name Galloper Brighteyes. And Scary Bear, yeah, I've seen a few of those. We, too, had tons of stuffies as kids and my boys did, as well. But as Annette said, there's always an alpha stuffie.

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    2. Oh, Gigi. Galloper Brighteyes. SO perfect.

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    3. I always liked the name Galloper Brighteyes, too. He was a palomino sock horse: his body was a golden tan sock, and his legs were white socks. But his eyes? Ah, his eyes were rhinestone buttons.

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  8. Like Joan, I don't remember my brothers and I having stuffies or blankies ( both words I read for the first time ) .
    At the beginning of the post I thought it was a thing of generations coming after me and I was surprised to see that most of you had one or both. So not a generation thing.
    My daughter had stuffies but I can't remember one that was an absolute necessity . I'll have to ask her.

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    1. Some of us have attachment issues, clearly. LOL.

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  9. I had Babar the Elephant as my stuffie (though I don't recall ever using that term for him) and Anabelle was my doll. I gave her a (most unfortunate) haircut and was really sad and surprised when her hair did grow not back. Don't you love kids' imagination?

    I also had a blanket, which was an old cloth diaper -- so soft and comforting. I used to put it on top of the humidifier where it got cool and slightly damp, then I would hold it while sucking my thumb. So soothing.

    I don't think either Babar or Anabelle exist anymore, but I think I must have asked my mum to dispose of them because throwing them away was beyond me and giving them away was unthinkable to me!

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    1. oops..."when her hair did *not* grow back."

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    2. Every doll I ever owned ended up with unfortunate hair. I can't imagine giving away my stuffies. The horror. I've still not watched Toy Story 3 - can't bear it.

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    3. Lots of tears in Toy Story 3, but it comes around right in the end.

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    4. My grandmother was a "beauty operator" and somehow she arranged to have her own, beautiful hair saved and used for doll hair on a doll for my Aunt Betty. It sounds very creepy to me, but apparently to my grandmother it was an extravagant gift. Meanwhile, Betty, being the daughter of a woman who made her living cutting other people's hair, immediately took her scissors and lopped off all of that doll hair, forever referred to as Grandma's Beautiful Hair. How did Grandma take this? Well, this event happened in the 1920's, and Grandma was still telling the story with some intensity in the 1970's when I heard it for the first (but not last) time. Didn't stop me from giving my Chatty Kathy a bob, though.

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  10. Stuffie is a new term for me, too. Love it though, there is something cozy and comforting about it. Like Rhys I did not get a teddy bear until I was a fully formed adult - somewhere in my 30s, and I also was not a fan of dolls, although I remember my mother tried desperately to get me to cherish them. My comfort sidekick was my pajama dog. Does anyone else remember them? They had zippers and you put your jammies in every morning and took them out every night. Mine was brown with big floppy ears and the softest thing I ever felt. He disappeared when I was in my 20s and my parents moved. I think there was a correlation there.

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    1. I love the idea of a pajama dog! I don't think I've ever seen one. Those dratted moves always meant a culling of the herd. Tough stuff!

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    2. Weren't they fabulous Gigi!

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  11. Stuffies? I must have had some. I do remember my mother learned from her friends that college girls had stuffed animals. She marched down to the basement and rummaged in the trunk that she'd brought East from California when she married Dad, and produced a moth-eaten rabbit wearing a pair of overalls. Benjamin Bunny. I took him to college and he's still sitting on my desk.

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    1. I just looked and I don't have a stuffie on my desk - just a Lego Wonder Woman, but I do have a tiger on my nightstand, who's been there for 29 years. I saw him at a craft fair and had to have him - very inquisitive eyes.

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    2. Lego Wonder Woman! I must investigate that...

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  12. I had Henry Dog. Just a big floppy dog. I loved the eyes and the nose off of him. One year, I found him in a bin of toys for a quarter at one of Mom's garage sales. Then a small boy picked him up. Yes, dear reader, I took Henry back. I gave the kid his quarter back AND another stuffie. I thought I was quite generous (I was, oh, 14 or so?). Mom thought I was insane. Henry is on a shelf to this day. I started collecting bears in high school; I have three shelves of them. Including Snuffles, who is a big pink Gund bear. He comforted my children on many an occasion.

    I don't think my kids have a particular stuffie that survived childhood with them, pity.

    Koda loves stuffies, but he rips them apart and pulls the stuffing out in less than twenty minutes. I have to be careful when I take him to my sister's - her son has many stuffies and Koda is not discriminating.

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    1. I love Gund bears! Yes, Annie, our dog has eyeballed a few of the Hooligans's stuffies but thankfully all but the alphas (thank you, Annette) were given away a few years ago.

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    2. Jenn, during my teen/college years, I bought one in every city I visited and named it after that city. I still have them all.

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    3. OK, just checked out the Gund site. Now I have a new Jones! Liz, you have much to answer for. I'm in love.

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  13. I loved my dolls! My favorite was a baby doll I named Bo and I also had a wonderful Susie doll with curly hair. I eventually outgrew them and then nothing really replaced them as lovies for me.

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    1. Judi: I like your term "lovies" for these (not always only) childhood friends. Nice!

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    2. I adore the term "lovies", too. So sweet.

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  14. When I was very small I had a stuffed dog named Pinky. I have no idea what ever became of him, but I do remember that by the time I lost track of him, he was a dingy gray that made the name kind of ironic.

    My niece Paige had "Lamby" and that moment did come when they left it behind in a fast food place while on a road trip. A few teary and sleepless days later they got a call from someone who had found Lamby, got their contact info from the restaurant manager, and arranged a meeting to return him. You just know those are people who had raised children and understood the importance!

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    1. It is important. I have a friend in her fifties who has never forgiven her stepfather for not driving back (a five minute drive) to the store where she left her favorite doll. She said, "He could have been my hero, but he chose not to be." How sad!

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  15. When our son Dash was two, he latched onto a stuffed owl in a store--a decorative item more than a kids toy, I should add, and expensive enough that we debated should we get it or tell him to just put it back.

    In retrospect, I can't imagine that we ever debated it. JoJo quickly became Dash's constant companion--best friend, security blanket, nighttime pillow. JoJo has been patched so much that nothing about the original him remains anymore--except his heart and soul, and I say that sincerely. We bought a back-up one because we feared that JoJo might get lost or simply stop holding together, but Dash won't have anything to do with the other one. He says the real JoJo has a special smell, a special everything. Dash hasn't spent a single night without JoJo in more than six years.

    Last summer, my dad died--and soon after, my wife Tara, Dash, and I took a long-planned trip to London. Tara talked to Dash about the idea of leaving JoJo at home--fears of him getting lost on the trip, of something else happening. Dash considered it, debated it, thought it might be a good idea. But guess who wasn't ready? I nearly cried as I told Tara and Dash that JoJo HAD to come to London. I'd had enough loss, and I wasn't leaving JoJo behind, letting him go. He was, after all, part of our family--still is, will be.

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    1. That is the sweetest story ever, Art! And you made that trip to London just in time.

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    2. (Sob). Thank you for that story, Art. I admit I have a sentimental attachment to my boys' stuffies, too. They represent the golden years of childhood and I'm not ready to say good-bye to those days completely either.

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    3. Awww....so very sweet. Such a talisman.

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  16. I had a red flannel elephant stuffie that my Grandmother made for me named Rosie/Dumbo. For some reason, I liked to pluck the fuzz of of it and it would eventually become a threadbare rag, and I had to beg my Grandmother for another one. One time, she decided to make me one out of what I can only remember as upholstery material - no plucking - so it just sat on a shelf, unused.

    My daughter had a blanket she called silkie that she could not do without. I got back-ups for it, but, like Art's son Dash, hers had a special smell. It was lost a few times, but we would retrace our steps and find it, thank goodness. She also had a tie-dyed beanie baby named Mellow ~

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    1. Beanie Babies - what a craze that was. Thankfully, it was before my sons were born. Oldest is the most easily suckered - to the point where if we saw a rack of stuffed animals, I used to cover his eyes and say, "Don't make eye contact," because he'd lose his heart so easily. Ugh.

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    2. Emma did as well. Once we were in Target and she saw a stuffed unicorn 🦄 and fell in love with it along with the song that was playing in the store. She asked me what the song was, and I said, "Dancing Queen," and she promptly named the unicorn Dancing Queen. What could I do?

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  17. I accumulated dolls and stuffed animals until I was in my teens. I do remember individual dogs and dolls, but really, I had lots of them, all vying for affection! Hm-m-m.

    My son also had a ton of stuffed animals, but his favorite was a very soft brown bunny that arrived the same week he did and is still here in dresser drawer. He took the bunny on all trips, until he went to camp. We convinced him that his fellow campers would do bad things to "Brown Bunny." Anyway, Jonathan was the "Boy With The Brown Bunny," then he became "Bunny Boy" and then just "Bunny Buns" or "Bunso." He's 38 years old and he answers to all of those names, to this day. He is my Bunny Boy, and he will always be my Bunny Boy.

    Rachel lived with her mom, but she traveled with "Kitty," a teeny little stuffed cat. One Kitty, early on, possibly before I met Irwin, got left at Arby's. They scrambled to replace Kitty with a similar beast. Kitty did go to camp and to college and I think Rachel has her somewhere, threadbare but secure from her own rampaging boys.

    The grandsons all have various stuffed animals but I haven't seen favorites last like "Kitty" and the "Brown Bunny."

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    1. Judy, I love that your kids had staying power with their affections. Bunny Boy is adorable.

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  18. Well, the Gott family "got" me, especially when it came to Perambulator. I'm still snorting unattractively over that one, Rhys.

    Aw, Art, you old softie. I love this story about JoJo.

    The only soft thing I remember clinging to as a child was a stuffed rabbit, made with real rabbit fur. It had a peculiar smell when it got wet, which like so many smells, I can recall to this day. But once I was in school I didn't take anything to bed with me.

    All three of my children sucked their thumbs, and all three of them used the burp diapers as their comfort, and so did my grandson. They were easy to replace, since I bought them by the dozen, and they could be washed frequently. Z finally gave up his "night-night" when he got to junior high. I wasn't sure it was going to happen, to be honest.

    My youngest had the most elegant choice, though. I wore silky nightgowns back then, and she always liked to rub part of them when she was going to sleep. She had a satin covered baby pillow too, and I made a pillowcase for it out of pink silk charmeuse. Luckily, I had scraps of the fabric to make portable "Satties". When it came time to wean her away from it we changed to a "big girl" pillow, and I just kept cutting pieces off Sattie, every couple weeks, until finally it was too small to use.

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    1. Ah, the weaning. I was a thumbsucker. I don't remember it being particularly traumatic to quit - probably, a different story from my mom.

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  19. No blankies or stuffies for me. Like Rhys, I received my first little bear when I was an adult. His name is 'Gary-bear' and he was given to me by my friend Gary. Gary-bear had an AIDS ribbon in place of a heart and I gave him to my mom during her last illness. We had to place Gary-bear and Bruno (another little bear) on her pillow each night. She told me "that little bear (Gary-bear) is so full of love." I have him still. Bruno went with Mom.

    My nephew's little boy came to him with a stuffed gorilla, no name. It resides on his bed along with a little stuffed dinosaur, and a stuffed snake that his dad won for him at a fair. His menagerie stays on his bed, though, he doesn't travel with any of them.

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    1. Smart to keep the critters corralled. The trauma of losing one - no one wants to go through that!

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    2. Z uses the snake to keep the other two coralled. He sometimes makes up stories for them before he goes to sleep, but during the day, he's happy as long as they're still on the bed.

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  20. Jungle Reds, I loved your stories about blankies, stuffies, and teddy bears.

    When I was a baby? or a toddler, I had a stuffed teddy bear and I still have it! I remember taking the same stuffed bear with me to an acupunturist when I was about 3 or 4 years old. Cannot recall if I took it everywhere.

    The first time I heard of stuffies is today reading your post.

    Diana

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    1. Maybe "stuffies" is a new term? I have no idea where it came from, probably one of my mom friends.

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  21. Little kids naming their stuffed and real pals, don't they crack you up? My grandson's stuffed toys were always unimaginatively named: Bearie, Fishie, Sharky, Dolphy (he was into stuff fish for a while), Pandie. Mothball and Woobie Dog are wildly imaginative, in comparison.

    My middle daughter and her friend Jill had crazy adventures with their Barbies. They cut off all the hair of one, then colored the stubs in rainbow patches. Thenceforth she went by the name "Reverend Rodman", after Dennis the crazy basketball player. Why Reverend? Who knows.

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    1. I do love the names. I still remember the look on the pediatrician's face when he asked Hooligan 1, "What's your dog's name? Puppy?" H1 looked at him and said said, "Chaos." The pediatrician blinked and said, "Of course, it is." Then he laughed for a solid five minutes. Chaos was second string to Hair Bear until he wore out. LOL.

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    2. OMG! Chaos!! Of course a Hooligan would name something Chaos.

      By the way, happy birthday to Hooligan 1 yesterday. Isn't it weird to be the parent of an actual adult?

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  22. I have a small collection of Madame Alexander dolls that were NOT played with, only looked at. They lived on a couple of shelves over my bed. I slept through the attack they launched on me one night. I slept through the 1969 Rogers Creek earthquake that night too. I don't remember any traumatic meltdowns due to missing stuffed animals, I had them but they lived at home and did not venture out in the world. I have one rabbit that used to live at grandma's so I would have something to play with. It's in one the storage sheds along with my brother's stuffed deer that he held TIGHTLY by the neck. That poor thing has no stuffing left to holds it's head up and my sister had a small bear that seems to be rather flat. It's stuffed but doesn't seem to have any dimension to it. Now, to the question of the day, do I take a bear to work today since we seem to be having more thunder and lightning?

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    1. A bear is always a good companion, IMHO. Be safe out there!

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    2. My Madam Alexanders solved mysteries because they thought they were Nancy Drew and chums.

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  23. It's funny--I looked and looked on line for a picture of Cinnamon. And I wondered if I would remember. I mean--I had the perfect image in my head of what he looked like--but was that real? After..maybe 65 years of not seeing him? It was amazing, after looking at so many photos, that BOOM. There he was.

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    1. Aw, now I have to look for Spotty. He was one of those stuffed animals that come with a book, because of course he was!

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  25. I was just getting something out of the bedroom and there is Curious George, sitting on a bookshelf. I remember buying him because he and my young son had so much in common. And out of the blue son brought me a stuffed Army bear dressed in camos from Ft Sam. Sweet and surprising!

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  26. I had a teddy bear. His name was Teddy. I still have it and he was well loved and I also had a fabric doll that had elastic to attach to your feet. I carried it by the feet and dragged it everywhere. My mom could not get it clean so she threw it out. I asked for it and she said it went on a very long trip.

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    1. Sort of like when the family pet goes "to the farm". Ugh. :(

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  27. I had a homemade doll named Mickey. I still have her!
    My daughter has a pink stuffed kitty. The poor thing looks horrible but it goes everywhere with us and she’s 6.

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    1. Sounds about right. The hooligans kept their critters with them until about age 8.

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    2. Beth, my pink kitty is 73. She looks aged, but still goes every where with me

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  28. Such great stories this morning--especially Art and JoJo!

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  29. I had some stuffed animals that my mom had sewed from patterns. Because of allergies, so fury creatures like you had, but I had the three bears, and I loved them. Especially baby bear. They usually stayed in my bed, but baby bear occasionally did go elsewhere with me. The only time they left the house was when we went camping - if we remembered them. Sometimes, they stayed behind to "guard the house."

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    1. That is sweet that your mom made your stuffed friends for you special, Mark.

      You reminded me of the Winnie the Pooh characters I made for my oldest: Winnie, Tigger, Kanga, and a tiny Roo that fit in Kanga's pouch. We still have Winnie, much loved by kids in this family since 1972.

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    2. I love that they "guarded" the house. LOL.

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  30. Wonderful stories that brought back memories that were tucked deeply away. I had a stuffed dog named Wow wow. My aunt & uncle babysat me one night (I was under 2 yrs old) and the story goes that I cried for hours because I wanted Wow wow. They didn't have a clue what/who Wow wow was. Fast forward 3 yrs.and Wow wow was a strip of leather that I draped over my arm. We were moving from ME to PA and my "big girl" move was giving Wow wow to Mum for burning in the barrel. I haven't thought of that in YEARS!
    NC vet school had an open house for children. A child could bring a stuffed animal that needed stitching and the students would "operate" on the animal. The "patients" came out with bandages on and instructions for post op care. It brought a tear to my eye to see the compassion of the students and the love that the children had for a hank of fur. Thanks again for the memories.

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    1. Wow wow - I adore that. Oh, that vet school story -- tears!

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    2. In my city, we have an annual Teddy Bears' Picnic hosted by the local Children's Hospital Foundation. The doctors and nursing staff all donate their time to perform medical miracles on children's most favourite and special stuffies/lovies. Such a great day!

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  31. Many years ago I handled PR at the county hospital in a rural part of Texas. When we opened a new pediatric unit, I ordered some small teddy bears with t-shirts that bore the hospital logo. Kids were given a bear when they were admitted, and when we ran out of that original batch, the nurses all told me I had to order more. They used the bears to demonstrate upcoming procedures to the kids, and let the kids carry them around for courage. The nurses in the ER asked for some of the bears, to give to kids who came in as a result of trauma. I even heard, through the grapevine, that one child who was transferred to a regional medical center in Fort Worth took his bear with him. The nurses there asked about it, and before too long that hospital was issuing bears to their young patients, too. Stuffie Magic is real.

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    1. They gave my 14 yr old a stuffie at the children's hospital when he went in for surgery. He named it after the surgeon who developed the procedure. Dr. Nuss. Th hospital loved that.

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    2. I'll be the folks at the hospital did love it. And isn't it interesting that even big kids like your 14-year-old can be comforted by a stuffie at times like that?

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  32. I had many stuffed animals and, though I did not carry them around, I insisted that every single one be nestled around me on my bed when I went to sleep. I was afraid that if I neglected one, its feelings would be hurt.

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  33. Pink and white dog called Weary it looks weary now 😇

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  34. I had a Snoopy hand puppet that my dad got me when I was born. I carried Snoopy everywhere, he even went to Europe in highschool with me, and to college. Poor guy started falling apart sometime in the 80s, when Billy Crystal had the catch phrase "You look Marvelous!". My mom got me a sweatshirt with the catch phrase on it for Snoopy to wear...basically to hold him together! ���� I still have him packed away somewhere!

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  35. I don't remember having a lovey or stuffie, but my children did. My oldest daughter had a stuffed lamb called lambuh.Lambuh has traveled all over the world including most of Europe and Korea. She also attended Smith College. My younger daughter had a Spot dog that she loved the pleather paws off. The Spot books were her childhood favorites. Spot also appeared in the movie Stealing Home as my brother was the set designer.

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  36. I don't remember having a lovey or stuffie, but my children did. My oldest daughter had a stuffed lamb called lambuh.Lambuh has traveled all over the world including most of Europe and Korea. She also attended Smith College. My younger daughter had a Spot dog that she loved the pleather paws off. The Spot books were her childhood favorites. Spot also appeared in the movie Stealing Home as my brother was the set designer.

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