Maybe I forgot about the stuffed animal beagle, but at the end of the academic year, it was waiting for me at home and I remembered it again.
I felt like the beagle was some sort of answer to my life. Life hadn’t held any meaning before the moment I laid eyes on my own stuffed animal beagle. And I had a lot of stuffed animals: about twenty bunnies of various shapes and sizes and colors, a cat, a white seal, and a few bears which were nothing special. I named him Bingo and he was different and new and not a hand-me-down and he was the first stuffed animal that I ever remember receiving, because I’d already had all those other stuffed animals since before memory held any place in my mind.
I took Bingo upstairs and downstairs. I took him to my friend’s house. I played pretend with him, and we were buddies, and I would run and he would run and we’d be just like Calvin and Hobbes. I took pictures of Bingo with my real beagle named Bingo (because all beagles, besides Snoopy, are named Bingo, obviously). I took Bingo out to restaurants, and in the car, and on trips.
And then something happened that took my relationship with Bingo by the scruff of the neck and stretched it in ways that made my heart dip into something like a steaming pit of dirty bath water. It wasn’t like the time my neighbor threw my Beanie Baby squirrel into their pond, or like the time where my stuffed animal cat, Kitty, lost her nose in my car seat. It wasn’t like the time when real-live-Bingo ate my model Alpaca, or the time he ripped the head off of one of my bears.
My younger brother, Zachary, was sitting next to me in the car on the way home from a restaurant one night. I’m sure my older brother was there too, but in my memory I don’t see him. My dad was driving and my mom was in the passenger seat looking ahead at the white road because in my memory I don’t notice the dark shades of the evening.
Zachary was little and jealous and there had been nothing as good as pizza or hotdogs at the restaurant, and his eyes were weary and his small baby mouth was pushed into a smudge of a pout. Usually that was me, and to see someone else take the place of the family Grump made me feel the flutter of pathetic hesitance. Maybe there were tears, or shouts, or a screaming tantrum. My little brother’s discomfort made my heart squirm and I knew there was only one way to solve it. And so I tried pushing Bingo in his face, saying, “hey, it’s okay,” you know, “don’t be sad!” and then my hold on Bingo was broken gently and I knew I was giving my brother my new best friend.
Just seeing Zachary’s tense shoulders relax as he clutched Bingo in his tiny arms, sitting in his gray car seat that had little colored squares all over it, the gleams in his wet eyes clearing up, made me think, okay. This is okay. It had to happen. It’s for the better.
And it was as if Bingo had just died, and I was never going to see him again because he wasn’t mine anymore. But my brother was happy, and I was happy for him.
It was there in my life that I think I started seeing things from the perspective of someone who wasn’t the center of the universe. I don’t like seeing people unhappy. I’m allowed to be sad, but if I can help it, my brothers and everyone else won’t be. By the end of the night my mom made sure Bingo was back with in my arms because she feels the same way about her children, and Zachary already had his bear Pooki and his jingle-dog Rosy at home, but I wonder how differently my life would have been if Bingo’s place as a puzzle piece in my life had been removed so early on.
What do you mean “my desire wasn't too deadly?”This line is a bit of an awkward and vague closing to an otherwise, very interesting introduction. I would shorten “stuffed animal beagle” to just “stuffed beagle” to streamline it. Also, when you say “waiting for me,” your speaking in your child voice, but a child would probably also say something like “at the end of the school year,” as opposed to “academic year.” I think it would be neat to see this story entirely through your child eyes. The last sentence of the third paragraph is a bit much, I would take out the last clause, it seems unnecessary. The fourth paragraph is funny, but I would also streamline it a little bit. I like the repetition of where you took him, I just think there should be a few less examples. I think the image of your heart in dirty bath water is great, but the scruff of the neck part before seems cliché and out of place. Also I think mentioning how your memory altered the scenario takes away from the story. I was enveloped in the story until you paused it to tell me how your memory may be wrong. In the end I think it could be a great story if you cut a lot of the bulky parts and made it a bit more concise. And I'm glad you got your Bingo back!
ReplyDeleteI like this story, its entertaining in the beginning, because who hasn't been that kid right? You do waver between seeing the world through the eyes of a child and reflecting on this memory from the present. I feel like the story gets a little to telling at the end where you are talking about how you want to make other people feel better. It would have been perhaps more interesting (though probably much harder) to write this section from a child's view as well. Confusion, regret, there are a lot of emotions that a child would feel but not necessarily understand but that your readers would be able to interpret fine. Just a thought, a challenge perhaps. Nice job!
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