By often, I mean “ever”.

At about age thirteen or fourteen, maybe fifteen, it becomes highly fashionable to pretend as if we were born in that state. If we’re 5’10” at the moment our adolescence crystallizes, then we were never 5’9”, and certainly never 3’9”. Independence, it seems, mandates a casting aside of all the old institutions, comforts, and habits, seldom if ever to be thought or spoken of again. All the childish things that had brought us this far into our lives are now anchors in the bottom. For fear of being held to our infancy as our friends sail away to worlds unimaginable, we cut them loose. Often we don’t look back.

Often, but not always.

Sometimes we sneak a glance at what was lost when we think that no one is looking. Maybe it just comes naturally as we grow old enough to relish what we had in our childhood innocence; to reflect on it fondly and turn it over. The things which have the ability to get me lost in my own memories are the things that are no longer are with me. Those things are never things. Always the people and friends who have once meant something dear to me and then parted ways. But the idea of friendship is a little more locked down now than it once was. It overlooks an experience I think a lot of us who shared in the universal privilege of being children once can still remember fondly.

The first friend I can remember having was a small, brown, stuffed bear.

I remember having him about age three or four, but I can’t say how long he had been mine. At that age, memories aren’t forming so well yet. I remember the cut of his fur: short, but with a slight curl that added a touch of authenticity. Now, decades later, I can close my eyes and immediately pull forth phantom sensations on my fingers to tell me all the details about the precise feel of my old friend. The softness of his body. The density of his stuffing. Hard but gentle glass eyes, a black nose, and the vivid bright red plastic heart protruding from his chest in a position offset slightly to the side true to human anatomical form. I don’t remember his name, but I can remember him before any clear memories of human friends. I know there were people there, people my age, but the memories of their presence at the same point in time didn’t form memories in the same way as the little brown bear.

Perhaps, that’s because I hadn’t created them. Part of the magic of our childhood stuffed animals is the way they enabled us to outwardly manifest ourselves in a safe way. A freedom of expression we didn’t even realize we were using, they become beings unto themselves entirely of our own design. The name is gone, but I remember that little brown bear in the hands of preschool era James had traits all his own. He loved to dance. He might not have been very good, but in fairness to the bear his partner was still working on developing motor skills. One hand of his to one of mine, a simple turn back and forth. More of a wobble than a dance, but he loved it. The name is gone, and along with that many specifics of the accompanying personality, but I remember that he was real to me, and I remember the warmth. There was the very real love I projected into him to be projected back at me and onto those around. The bear could express affection or opinion when I couldn’t, an emissary to parents and daycare employees alike. A shield to hide behind. That 10” bear might as well have been a real trained grizzly for all the safety and security he brought. He had the courage to say what I couldn’t.

“Mr. Bear was wondering if maybe we could have another cookie even though I told him you said we couldn’t. I told him, but he still thought we should ask, maybe.”

In the end, I hurt him. I didn’t mean to, but that’s how it goes with too many of our most treasured relationships. We were in a hotel room somewhere at a psychological convention where my father was speaking. I was laughing and marveling in the way his fur looked blowing in the high speed winds coming from the room’s hair dryer. Before I realized it his wonderful soft fur had started melting. Within seconds, his soft chest and belly had turned into a hard sheet of rough plastic. I can only imagine the hysterics my poor parents must have endured as the grief of having just maimed my best friend poured over, though, and out of me. I remember crying and asking my mother to fix him, but reversing the process of melting plastic defies even the nearly limitless nature of maternal superpowers. Obviously he wasn’t dead entirely, but things were never the same. My love as a child was particularly fickle. The softness was lost. He no longer had the ability to snuggle without scratching skin on the rough patch where I had hurt him, and I simply couldn’t get myself to love him the way that I had prior to the incident. There was guilt. Intense guilt. He had been disfigured through something I had done, and while I could tell his feelings for me hadn’t changed, I just didn’t have the same warmth for my little brown bear.

The personalities which developed by projection through stuffed animals would have distinct traits from me. Having enough distance now to observe myself allows me to see it was usually traits I wished I could or thought I should possess more directly in myself. They were something to emulate. The little brown bear with the melted chest looked at me with the same affectionate eyes he always had, even when I had disfigured him so and didn’t want him anymore. He looked at me the same as my parents brought new bears around to try and replace the melted one. In all of this, he exhibited unconditional love, and I knew that. At four years old, I knew he had the ability to love in ways that I as a boy of flesh and blood could not, hence my guilt. Quite impressive emotional development for a polyester bear.

While I’m sure there were others along the way, I don’t have a clear memory of another stuffed animal for several years. The family loaded up the station wagon one summer and went to visit relatives on my mother’s side in Texas. What really mattered about that trip was a single bit of hallowed ground my parents took me to known as Sea World. This is where I first learned about penguins. A pivotal moment. I sat in the penguin encounter for a couple of hours that day, just in awe. They were fat, awkward, couldn’t run or move particularly well. I identified with them profoundly, and by the end of the day I was leaving the gate under the escort of a defining childhood influence: a stuffed penguin aptly and named Pengy.

Pengy was a puppet technically, so he lacked feet. A small fellow, lacking the bright orange chest markings that make the King and Emperor species the most recognizable. I think I decided he must have been a Gentoo penguin as I set about learning the names and characteristics of all the varieties of penguins. Pengy helped me bestow the wonders of penguins to some of my other friends, several of whom were sufficiently impressed to get their own stuffed or otherwise collectible penguins. He was an inseparable best friend, coming to grade school in a backpack. And his personality developed. Like the little brown bear, I know him still just as well as I remember anyone else I’ve known. He was stoic, contemplative, and a touch reserved, but exceptionally generous and benevolent. He would only rarely peck people in the face, and even then only when they really deserved it. He was very, very smart, and not just smart for a flightless bird, but smart by people standards as well. He was an inventor and very rich, but always doing charitable works with his fortune. Somewhere between a superpower and the advanced displayed by Inspector Gadget were his feathers. They could do basically anything. One Pengyfeather, as they were known, could come out and turn into a submarine. Another would turn into a mansion, or a Nintendo, or snacks. He had a special feather capable of doing anything imaginable, but it never went to his head. He always remained humble and true to his simple roots.

At Christmas I informed my parents of the importance Pengy be included in the gift exchange. Knowing his taste better than anyone else, I chose a gift for him. Sitting under the tree was a small package crudely wrapped and addressed to him. The tag said it was from Santa, but I think he knew it was from me by the handwriting. I helped him take off the crude wrapping to reveal, much to his delight, a can of sardines. He allowed me to take them straight to the kitchen and open them under his guidance. He had a few, and I tried one. They were packed in tomato sauce and to weren’t to my liking. I was disappointed as I really wanted to like them, knowing this to be his favorite food. I pretended to enjoy my one small fish and put the rest in the fridge saying we’d save them for later. They quietly disappeared. Either he finished them when I was at school or somebody else in the house may have decided they were not happy about all the food taking on the odor of sardines. I still don’t know for sure, but I have a hard time believing he would have finished them without at least asking me if I wanted any more. He was big on sharing.

Other sea life joined our happy family over the next several years, primarily more penguins. While I think it eventually got close to a dozen, I really only remember a few major additions. Second to join was another penguin named Snowball. He had some yellow to his chest, a disproportionately small head, and an exceptionally fat, round body. He wasn’t very smart, but he was a lot of fun. He would spin through the air in insistent attempts to prove his ability for flight to the rest of us, never quite succeeding convincingly but never giving up, either. He suffered no fear of social awkwardness and was generally outgoing and boisterous; traits I certainly envied. Another Christmas brought massive matching stuffed penguins for my brother and I both. Almost too big to put arms around and clearly meant to watch over the others and defend from the family dog. Tassie, our Australian Shepherd, had at one point taken off Pengy’s nose in an act of unwarranted aggression. Mom bought some material from the fabric store and managed to reconstruct him, but things were always understandably tense after that. The dog and I had a strained relationship for a variety of issues all related to her belief that everyone I liked should be treated with teeth, and the new large bird helped with defense. I gave him a name, and for reasons which were not given my father instructed me to pick another name. Despite the almost imperceptible degree of variation, I was informed that “Pecky” was fine whereas “Pecker” had not been. Years later, I understood.

It would seem safe to assume that friends who have had their every characteristic constructed by your own imagination would be friends with whom the relationship would always be happy, but that assumes too much about the nature of children. Not that they every got angry at me, of course. My animals were all saints aside from occasional bouts of harmless mischief. I got angry. Children do that. I’d get angry and have nowhere to direct it but my close trusted friends, these defenseless animals. I had a large stuffed dolphin uninventively named Dolphy. He had a device in him that would cause him to make dolphin noises when squeezed. In the states of abusive rage that would take over my smaller self, as penguins would be thrown across the room or stuffed into painful contortions, he would be swung by the tail with his head smashing into the hardwood floor of my bedroom as the rapidly expelled air turned his cute dolphin noises into desperate screams. And of course he hadn’t done anything. I suppose on one hand I was just a child throwing a tantrum, but I knew I was worse than that. I was hurting innocent creatures who trusted me because I wanted to hurt something and they were available and vulnerable. Whoever I was really angry at was less available to my wrath. I couldn’t really do anything to strike back when dad was overworked and yelling at me for reasons I never seemed to understand. I couldn’t do anything to the mean kids at school who through their cruel taunting helped me learn all too young what suicidal ideation was. I couldn’t do anything to God for ignoring my prayers to take away the things that hurt and made me afraid. In the innocence of my child’s mind, abusing a stuffed animal I loved was about the ultimate form of evil. Afterwards I always sobbed my eyes out and felt worse for a while, shocked and appalled from the unchecked rage. I’d apologize and tell my animals how awful I was. They always forgave. Always the unconditional love. They probably knew they could take it and that I needed to let out some of the hurt. Somewhere in this I learned about transference, and to watch for that in myself. Also about regret. And shame. And forgiveness.

My father worked. A lot. He was gone long before I woke up in the morning, and between his job with the state and his private practice patients in the evenings and on weekends I often wouldn’t see him at all for days. If I did, it was usually very late at night when he’d get home at ten or so. I would generally be in bed already with all my animals, and I’d bring him up to speed on the recent developments happening between them. What they’d had for dinner. What they were thinking and planning. I can remember a running dialog for months revolving around holding a penguin olympics. I don’t remember how that was going to work, but I remember there were elaborate details in my head at the time and ideas about how to build a stadium from cardboard. More than anything dad and I built things together in the occasional bits of time we had together. We built cars from wood or lasers from parts ordered from science catalogs. For all the planning I really thought we’d build a cardboard penguin stadium eventually, but that didn’t work out. He died of cancer first. There was a stuffed penguin in his hospital room I’d picked out and brought to him. Two penguins, technically. It was a large emperor penguin looking down at his feet where a small gray penguin chick was safely nestled. They too had personalities, one of steadfast determination and unerring love, the other of blissfully ignorant innocence facilitated in the safety provided by the other. In the redistributing of all the new things which had come into the family possession during the filling of that hospital room, the paired penguins went back home with me. That was the last time a stuffed animal of personality was to come into my life. After that I lost the innocence necessary to create separate lives inside of plastic eyes. They stopped having stories to tell. That’s when the “growing up” happened, as it unfortunately does for everyone eventually.

Somewhere in all of us there’s a soft spot for the soft friends of our early years. The surprising degree of my own reactivity in writing this proves to me that they’re not as distant as we might tell ourselves as we become more like what we think adults are supposed to be and less like people who invent the lives of inanimate objects. I’ve had stuffed animals given to me in fairly recent years from girls I’ve dated, but of course it isn’t the same. They just remain as objects, becoming eventual reminders of the sweetness I had in those moments when a love was happening, but not developing their own personalities. They’re only things, not friends. But the point of all of this (think big picture, now) is to collect memories we can look back on with fondness. The elaborate stories of my stuffed animals tell me things about who I was as a child which has a great deal to do with who I am now. I was mostly happy, and imaginative, and generally disinterested in what was and wasn’t real or possible as it applied to creating those stories. I aspired to be kind and generous, courageous and respected, as that’s what I made my friends to be. Without judgement, stuffed animals had things to teach about the ways of love and friendship. They were important, and just like the memory of anything that steered us through the process of our becoming, they still are.