I threw my childhood away today. I packed it up in a plastic bag and out it went. I’d been considering doing it for a long time, but today turned out to be the day. Nearly 60 years gone, and finally the remnants have been returned to the earth from which they came.
Manfred the Wonder Dog was the hardest. He was a red and white stuffed dog intended for use by a child as a sit-on and/or lie-upon. I used Manfred for watching TV. His name came from a cartoon on Captain Kangaroo, but damned if I can remember the name of the cartoon—which I think was the name of the main character. I think it was a kid with a funnel for a hat, and the kid was really smart. No, wait, I just Googled it. Tom Terrific, that was the kid’s name.
Then there was the poodle-ish animal with the “diamond” choker my grandmother made for me. Gram made me lots of stuffed toys over the years, and they were among my favorites. I still have the Raggedy Ann and Andy. I’ll never give those up even though the sizing in the material has made their poor faces look like they suffer from vitiligo, and Ann’s right eye has ripped out and now hangs by little more than a thread.
A small, flower-print, vaguely human-shaped doll and a little blue dog with a zippered pouch that was never big enough for pajamas rounded out today’s haul.
They had to go, you see, because they lay on the floor, collecting dust, hidden away, unseen by anyone save myself, under a table, where one of the cats, potentially flea-ridden, used Manfred for a pillow. Yeah, I could have washed them and hoped I’d gotten the eggs, but there comes a point in a life when you have to stop thinking of yourself in terms of your stuff and accept that you are who you are with or without all that stuff.
Other stuff will eventually follow. You can’t hold on to everything, and, as they say, you certainly can’t take it with you.