This week my 10 year-old son dug up his old Teddy Bear, “Blueberry”. I had picked up the blue bear for him 5 years ago when I was back visiting one of my alma mater’s (Duke University – “Blue Devils”). He has been sleeping with Blueberry in his bed the last few days. Mind you, we have recently seen “Toy Story 3” (see my post).
Last night he came and sat with me saying, “I remember the whole thing” and with teary-eyes but a faint smile he proceeded to tell me the day I gave him the bear including what we were wearing and the weather. I asked him what he was feeling. He asked me, “Dad, why do we stop playing with our toys? Those are such good memories.”
Oh the power of imagination and of imaginary friends.
Triangulations 
i once posted a poem on another blog that talked about how inanimate objects are indeed animated by our memories that are attached to them. i am always amazed by the human mind.
I’ve just switched toys and leave the old ones carefully tucked away in my mind. 🙂
Very nice post. Touching really… I can empathize with your son… at my age I still can bring up nice memories and miss my brown teddy bear, “Smoochie”… I can sort of remember knowing he wasn’t really real and not caring.
I have many fond memories of my toys – mostly because I wasn’t very careful with them. The most fun I ever had with my stuffed animals was during family parties when my cousins and I would do battle in the spare room and fling them all over the bed at each other in the dark.
Other toys never got tossed around, per se, but I did use them past their natural demise and didn’t care if parts were missing. Imagination filled in whatever was physically lost anyway.
I still keep a few toys around as reminders (some stuffed toys, a plate from a tea set, fake lego pieces, a couple McDonald’s happy meal things) but most of it’s gone to better places now. Or into the garbage…
Thanx folks.
I let my son read the post — he smiled. He smiled even more at your comments. Then he asked me, “But Dad, why did you put this post up?” I replied, “Well, think about it: this is an atheist site and I am talking about imaginary friends.” He quickly understood I was alluding to Jesus-Teddy-bear — a friend many ex-Christians miss (or at least the imagined one).
Thanks for the great post honey! Thankfully the bear never started talking to him and telling him the way to everlasting life. I don’t think his friends could have managed an intervention on that one.
FYI Readers: Spring Chicken is my wife! I told Mike, Zero1Ghost and Ed to cease with the terms of affection long time ago! 🙂
Sweetheart… no need to get uptight… :-}}
I stopped the terms of affection a while back, honey bun. 😉