Panda

[redbird]

Signs of adulthood, #473: When you're a grownup, you have to repair your own stuffed animals.

I've had this stuffed panda for 30 years, which is a quite respectable age for any panda, biological or stuffed. She's in good shape for her age, but she'd developed rips near the seams of both rear legs. I'd just sort of lived with that, and kept sleeping with one arm around her (it's comforting).

A couple of nights ago, I leaned on her wrong while getting to sleep, and half-detached one ear. Surgery was clearly called for. My mother is a long way away, and it's been a long time since I've asked her to do my sewing. So I did it myself. First the ear, with black thread. Then a break to replace a button on my all-purpose black cardigan, since I had the black thread in the needle anyway.

Then, switch to white thread and fix her legs. Panda was very brave, and didn't complain at all.

This morning, she looks right, and I can no longer see her insides.

Comments

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I have five soft toys: a gorilla that was bought for me twelve years ago, and a lion bought for me ten years ago: also a mouse, a beanie-baby Vulcan, and a Clanger, all three about the same size, which were all given me more recently. Three out of the five were bought for me by the same person: my nephew gave the mouse to my cats for a Christmas present, back when he was young enough that he didn't understand that it would be a very short-lived Christmas present, and the Clanger was a gift from my sister. I suppose I had soft toys when I was younger, but I don't recall them and certainly don't still own them - what I did own was a set of plastic animals with which I told myself stories. I still have one of the originals. Part of their usefulness as story-subjects was that at one time they were available in any toy shop for pocketmoney, so if I lost one I could simply resurrect it again in another body.