Let’s have a heart-to-heart
I bite my nails. I’ve been biting them since I developed teeth. I remember, back when my parents were still married and life was seemingly normal (before I was five years old), one of them took me to Toys-R-Us. Do those stores even exist today? We used to visit them regularly, in anticipation of upcoming birthday parties. I was a semi-spoiled only-child who could not leave without receiving a gift of my own. Usually barbies. But on this particular day, when one of them brought me to Toys-R-Us, I was bribed.
“We’ll buy you this teddy bear if you stop biting your nails,” I was told. Keep in mind, I was not more than four years old. The teddy bear in question was immediately dubbed “Heart to Heart Bear,” mostly because that’s what was sewn on his shirt. I treasured him. Beneath his nightgown, there was a pocket in his little teddy bear chest. And, in this pocket, was a plastic “heart” that had a button. When the button was pressed, it would feel like a literal beating heart. Eventually I removed the heart because it interrupted my sleep (it was, no surprise, subsequently lost).
After the divorce, he traveled back and forth with me, in my backpack. I never slept without him. That is, until I became a teenager, got a boyfriend, and 
decided he was better off at home. Of course, he came with me to college. However, I decided to leave him behind when I spent a year living in South America. I remember coming home, at the end of that year, excited to see him. I was 21 years old.
He still sits on my bed, and occasionally rests under my arm while I am sleeping. Yes, dear Reader, I still sleep with a teddy bear.
Needless to say, I still bite my nails. Bribes + young kids = unsuccessful, in my humble opinion.
Here he is, in all his torn and aged glory. My father’s mother wrestled him from me once, when I was still young. She insisted he be washed. She carefully removed his sleeping cap and his nightgown in order to put him in the washing machine. Though we are still in possession of his nightgown, the sleeping cap was never placed back on his head (and it, too, was subsequently lost). I always resented her for that.
Now, when I notice that his nightgown is falling apart, I immediately rush to a sewing kit. Perhaps I’ll never be ready to “grow up” and pack him away in a box in the attic. Perhaps he’ll always be sitting on my bed.
12 responses so far
Dude, I sleep with two teddy bears and a duckie AND a Rainbow Brite blanket. I will sleep with one of those teddy bears (the one I had since I was three) and the blanket until I die. No shame in that. :oD
i moved around so much growing up that i dont have anything left from when i was little. i still occasionally do sleep with a teddy bear (but only when i’m feeling particularly sad and tragic
). my little ikea teddy bear was one of the first things i bought when i moved here. oh, and toys-r-us still exist. at least in australia 
All I know is, there’s no shame in transparency. And, you can’t really bribe a forty-year-old any more effectively than a four-year-old. And, this article has been with me for a really long time:
http://asstudents.unco.edu/students/AE-Extra/2002/4/Art-2.html
oh heart to heart bear! you have seen alot!! i still have moosie and max. and although they dont reside on my bed anymore, they mean more to me then any material object i own. heart to heart bear for life!!
love u
xoxo
Don’t we all have a bear like that?
Mine just happens to be a one meter long tiger…
there’s a really ghetto toys-r-us in van nuys, right by sherman way and balboa. i also still have my baby blanket, dubbed my “doggy blanket” because the fabric has little scottish terriers on it. it’s red and black and at my parents’ house.
i turn 36 tomorrow. i sleep with my teddy, my bebye (blanket), a hello kitty blanket and as many pillows as i can get in my bed and still fit me. then my cat comes and finds his spot in my arms. you still have your bear, i have all my crap too. we’re cool.
kja. that is the exact toys r us where i got my bear!!!
I know this is hard to believe but I don’t think I ever had a stuffed animal that I treasured like this. I would sleep with one occasionally but there was never one reigning animal that stuck around. It’s a little sad….
Mine’s name is fluffy. He’s a ratty gray dog I received when I was around four. At 24 he’s still with me as well. There’s something comforting about him.
that is awesome. yay for the valley-dwellers! i only lasted a year in the valley, though the memories are endless… glad i’m going back to the cruz nevertheless.
This is sweet. My sister & I had a small menagerie of stuffed animals that were very dear to us growing up–one of them, a bear that had belonged to my father, is falling apart, covered in so many patches from when I tried to stitch & bandage “his wounds.” Thinking about them is like remembering old friends. I still sleep with a stuffed animal–a lion my boyfriend bought me at the circus a couple years ago.