Stuffed animals somehow have always aroused a sense of sorrow in me. I have never been quite able to explain why. Like babies, a new stuffed animal is fresh and clean, full of the promise of happiness to those very children as they grow. But what about those stuffed animals who become dirty, worn, torn and tattered?
Barbara Fairchild recorded and made a hit of “Teddy Bear Song” in 1972. The lyrics were written by Nick Nixon and Donald L. Earl (Source: https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Barbara-Fairchild/Teddy-Bear-Song Retrieved March 4, 2025). The song was also recorded by Tanya Tucker. That song for some reason always makes me want to cry.
While searching YouTube for that song, I also found a recitation by Red Sovine titled “Teddy Bear”. I’d never heard it before, but it is also a “tear jerker”. If you have the time, it’s sure worth a good listen.
When I was young, a local church brought my family a Christmas basket. Included within this generous gift was a teddy bear.
The bear I received in the Christmas basket was not new. Anyone, even me, could tell it had seen its better days. Had it been a car or human, it would have been said to be on its last legs. I could tell it had once been pink and white, but it’s white had become a dirty gray, and its pink was faded and also dirty. It had a couple of tears here and there that revealed the nature of its stuffing. If I had a teddy bear today in the condition of the one I received that Christmas season, I would not donate it to the neediest child. I’m afraid it would wind up in the nearest dumpster.
I wonder now how the bear came to be in that condition. Was it so dirty because it had been in unclean environments? Was it worn because it was loved by possibly several children over more than a single generation? Was it torn because some mean child had mistreated, abused, then neglected it? Was it tattered because it had been loved to pieces?
Regardless, rather than an object ready for the junk pile, I saw worth in that poor bear. It had found the right home, and I was just the one to give it extended life. From the moment I saw it, my young mind began working on a number of imaginary possibilities.
I suppose I felt a kinship with the bear from the beginning, as perhaps only a child being raised with no siblings could sense its loneliness. I now see a parallel in myself as a child to Hermey, the misfit elf in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who wanted to be a dentist rather than a toymaker, while the bear was definitely an object for the Island of Misfit Toys.
As much as I came to live that tattered toy, I never gave the bear a name, but it was and will forever remain my best inanimate friend. In my imagination, the bear could be either gender I needed to enact an imaginary scene. In my imagination, the bear was either male or female, only one gender at any given time. I generally cast the bear in a feminine role, as I only had one dress for it that had once belonged to a maternal niece.
Sometimes I placed that dress on that bear and placed it in an old school desk, and it became the first and best-behaved pupil of my play (and real) school career.
Sometimes I put my arm around the bear and walked it up and down the driveway, sharing with it my deepest thoughts and secrets as we strolled under the mystical glow of the street light.
Occasionally the bear was my partner in the fights of my imaginary Old West. The poor bear, ragged though it was, suffered from my Old West imagination, as it lost one of its eyes in a fist fight. In this role the bear was always male, as I was taught it was never appropriate for a male (me) to strike a female. In the instances in which the bear filled a masculine role, his clothes were imaginary, as I had no male clothes small enough to fit my silent friend.
Many times the bear served as my corpse, as I dressed it and placed it in a homemade coffin fashioned from an old suitcase abandoned by my sister Anna Mae. I never actually buried the bear—I just hauled it multiple times in my imaginary red wagon “hearse” from imaginary grave to imaginary grave in the field between Jack Warwick’s rental house and Bull Run Creek. I’d go back after dusk and retrieve the bear for the next day’s funeral. I don’t know about the bear, but it was challenging to be funeral director, minister and mourner at all those imaginary funerals!
One role the bear could never fulfill was as a candidate for baptism. For that role, I had to secretly borrow one of Mother’s dolls. Don’t ever believe that dolls don’t talk—I got caught when the doll retained water from its baptism in the creek which slowly leaked out once I placed it back in Mother’s assigned spot.
The poor bear was a good actor—no matter what undignified role I assigned it, it never gave one word of complaint, never challenged my choice of imagination, and always remained faithful.
Sadly, I was not destined to remain as faithful. The bear, though it aged, never grew up. It and I both aged, the bear grew more tattered, and I outgrew my steadfast stuffed friend. I’m sad to say I don’t even know what happened to the inanimate friend with whom I spent so many happy hours.
Though the stuffed creature could feel nothing, I feel for it now the sorrow of a happy and carefree childhood friendship that nevermore can be.
Could the bear return to me once more and become a real, living creature, how I would hug it, kiss it, and thank it for all the happy memories! How I would beg forgiveness for causing it to lose an eye, for neglecting and losing it at the end. How we both would weep, me for lost childhood and the bear for not having another child to make happy.
Below are the lyrics to “Teddy Bear Song”.

I wish I had button eyes and a red felt nose.
shaggy cotton skin
and just one set of clothes.
sitting on a shelf in a local department store.
With no dreams to dream and nothing to be sorry for.
I wish I was a teddy bear.
not living or loving nor going nowhere.
I wish I was a teddy bear and I′m wishing that I hadn't fallen in love with you.
Wish I had a wooden heart and a sawdust smile.
Then your memory wouldn’t come around hurting all the time.
I′d have a sewed-on smile and a painted twinkle in my eye.
and I never would have ever had to learn how to cry.
I wish I was a teddy bear.
not living or loving nor going nowhere.
I wish I was a teddy bear and I'm wishing I hadn't fallen in love with you.
I wish I had a string you could pull to make me say.
"Hi I′m Teddy, isn’t it a lovely day."
Then I know every time I spoke the words were right.
no one would know the mess I made of my life.
I wish I was a teddy bear.
not living or loving nor going nowhere.
I wish I was a teddy bear
and I′m wishing I hadn't fallen in love with you.
and I′m wishing that I hadn't fallen in love with you.

Even teddy bears have their problems. In the end, all children become adults, and teddy bears are forgotten and disappear. But, ah, with maturity comes the memories . . .

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 52
According to San Banducci, when does old age come? (ANSWER: Old age comes at a bad time.)

QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 53
Why did the moon skip dinner? (See next week’s article in historicunioncounty.com for the answer.)

JOKES FROM MY COLLEGE FRIEND MARY E. ROSE

People are shocked when they find out I’m not an electrician!

I don’t trust the beach. Too many flip flops!

The mom said, “Don’t roll your eyes.”
“Because it’s rude?” her son asked.
“No,” said the mom, “because you’ll never find them again.”

I stayed up all night, wondering where the sun went. Then, it dawned on me.

A photon checks into a hotel. The clerk asks him if he needs any help with his luggage. “No, thanks, I’m traveling light.”

My friends worked out a fitness app for insects, but they’re still working out the bugs.

I can make you laugh, but I’m not a clown. Those are pretty big shoes to fill.