over a teddy bear

[Blade_Raver]

VRS... I want to work your job for 2 weeks. The degree of stupidity that the people you deal with have are excellent candidates for my hate and rage.

I would be verbally tearing those schmucks new @$$holes...

I'm sorry that you are forced to put up with it by your manager... and then your spineless manager caving into their unreasonable demands..

With all the money they'll spend on therapy, they could buy the kid tens if not hundreds of teddy bears....

[Amandarthegreat]

Guest: Find the bear. My wife and I get no sleep at night because he cries all the time about it. This is my last phone call. Next time, I am sending the police.

I would pay good money to hear that phone call to the police!
Would the guest claim kidnapping, theft, or file a missing persons report?

[MTNLaurelPoacher]

Something similar happened to my family, yet the outcome was TOTALLY DIFFERENT. We didn't bitch and moan and accuse someone of theft, because of what a child did.

We were on a family trip to the Land of the Mouse. Somewhere between our door step and our destination "Betty" got lost, and the water works started .

Let me describe Betty. Betty was named after our next door neighbor. Betty is a medium sized doll with a soft blue cloth body and a plastic head. The yellow hair on Betty is permanently in a mowhawk or cowlick or what ever you want to call it because that is what my sister used as a handle. Betty goes everywhere indoors and out, and has been used as a weapon on more than one occasion.

So Betty disappears and my sister looses it. It sounds like we were stabbing her with knives or something, seizures, convulsions, crying, scratching, heck the Vatican sent a Priest because she was 40 lbs of possessed demon child.

So, this goes on for 200 miles. We finally roll into a generic roadside hotel because we are frazzled, and tired. My dad says he is going to pickup some dinner and he would be right back.

He disappears faster than Betty.

1 hour goes by...

2 hours go by....

No dad...

He shows up, WITH BETTY and McDonalds. My sister freaks! Betty Betty Betty! Daddy you found Betty!

Later when we get to the Mouse and are checking into the hotel, I am helping dad unload the car and I come across a brand new suitcase. I am puzzled, and ask dad whats in the case. He pulls me aside and opens the case. It is STACKED with Betty dolls, in the box! He bought 10 of em!

Turns out he had run up the road and raided a Toys- R- We. He purchased every Betty doll they had. He had broken one out of the packaging and distressed it (buy pulling off the clothes and running the bottom half over with the car a few times) to make my sister convinced it was the real Betty.

We never traveled without a spare Betty again.

Moral of the story is-

If your kid loves the doll, and can't live without it, KEEP A SPARE!

[DesignFox]

Well, until you went into retail, that is.

Yes, now I am just a hollowed out shell of a person...cynical and apathetic with all the magic and joy leeched from my very core...

nah. not really.

My "Doggie Baby" as he's called stays with me to this day. Much as my customers sometimes make me want to, I don't suck my thumb anymore, though.

I love the story about the Betty doll. Clever dad you have there MTN.

[Golden Phoenix]

My old teddy named (rather unimaginatively) Captain Ted was passed down to me by my mother.

When i got him he was already well loved and hadhad to be patched occasionaly, he was stuffed with sawdust which leaked now and then and his squeaker in his chest had broken.

I still love that bear with all my heart. I intend to passit down to my first child when they're old enough, he's in rough shape these days after years with me, h'es been sewn back together in placed, part of his head is a little misshapen and his feet had to be patched up pretty extensively, also his sawdust from his chest leaked and had to be replaced with ordinary stuffing so there's an odd chnage in texture there when you hug him.

Right now he's sitting on my bedside table with his companion Miss piggy, who was a thin pillow with two ears sewn on and painted on features. I used to use her instead of an ordinary pillow.

My cousin, who is 20 still won't go anywhere without her pillow which is now so old and thin you can barely tell what it once was.

[Argabarga]

My Mom took away my security blanket when she felt I was too old for it (and obviously, our opinions on that matter didn't jibe)

Since it had been hand-knitted by my Grandma, she couldn't just throw it away, it being kind of a keepsake in that reguard, so she "hid" it.

Or , tried to hide it.

3 or 4 times...

Never underestimate the sleuthing abilities of a kid!

[auntiem]

Later when we get to the Mouse and are checking into the hotel, I am helping dad unload the car and I come across a brand new suitcase. I am puzzled, and ask dad whats in the case. He pulls me aside and opens the case. It is STACKED with Betty dolls, in the box! He bought 10 of em!

Turns out he had run up the road and raided a Toys- R- We. He purchased every Betty doll they had. He had broken one out of the packaging and distressed it (buy pulling off the clothes and running the bottom half over with the car a few times) to make my sister convinced it was the real Betty.

We never traveled without a spare Betty again.

Your Dad is a brilliant man!

I have a small beanie animal that I can't fly without. Yes, I'm a grown ass adult. Yes, I've been halfway to the airport and had to turn around for it. The poor thing used to have to spend vacation locked in the in room safe to insure it wouldn't get lost so that I could fly home. In the rare instances there is no in room safe I had to resort to asking the front desk folks to put it in their safe - most were very kind about it.

[Pagan]

I am so glad I'm not the only one that still has a stuffed animal. I've got a donkey (got it for Christmas years ago). It's a she and her name is Dawn. I don't know why, that's what she told me. She just sits on the corner of my bed normally. But I can tell if I haven't been feeling good during the night, I'll wake up holding her.

Yes, now I am just a hollowed out shell of a person...cynical and apathetic with all the magic and joy leeched from my very core...

nah. not really.

Which is why I'm out of retail....sort of. I just graduated last Saturday and I'm now a pharmacy tech(taking my nat'l certification test Monday). As soon as they call me for orientation, I'll be working at Wally World. But at least this is something that people need. And I've discovered that I'm not cold and cynical....I'm too damn soft-hearted!

[depechemodefan]

I remember an episode of Newhart. Julia Duffy's char. (if you never watched the show, her char. was a rich girl who for some reason worked as a maid for the Newhart's Vermont inn. She sucked at it. But her fiance, played by the other Bosom Buddy, lived in that town too) had this toy rabbit. It went missing. The woman who believes money buys everything is too distraught about her missing bunny. Her parents "find" the missing bunny. But wait! It doesn't have the heart she penned in on his rt. foot! It's a forgery! Bad parents! But the parents said they had the plant open on a Sunday to manufacture the imposer bunny, so the bunny cost $10,000. JD's char. then falls in love with the bogus rabbit.

Years latter I wondered why I watched Newhart. Bad crap kept on happening to the guy.

[morgana]

I have a teddy that I'd be plenty upset to lose. Not because he was a childhood friend, no. I've only had him about ten years.

He was made by a friend of my mother's. Out of my Dad's old clothes. About a month after Dad died.

Yeah, I'd be upset if he went missing.

[Quitbuggingmeandgoaway]

I'd be upset if I lost Wrinkles. Wrinkles is a stuffed dog I got the day my sister was born (January 9, 1987). He was given to me by my aunt.

http://www.ilovethe80s.com/toys_toys_wrinklesdogs.htm is what he looks like.

I know I should've come up with a special name for him, but Wrinkles has been his name. I used to keep a close eye on him, and took him on overnight trips (even snuck him on a boy scout camping trip once) for fear that being away from him overnight that he could get damaged (at that time, I was deathly afraid of house fire since a friend of mine had one).

I didn't take him to college (when I went away for a semester) but I brought him to VA when I moved here, where he sits on my couch. My new g/f loves him!

As far as other stuffed animals have gone, some are "under the house" in our "sub-basement", some are still on display in my old room. , particularly my snoopy collection. My parents haven't gotten rid of them yet thank god. I'll probably bring some Snoopy stuff down when I go back in 2 weeks for a wedding.


but yes, back to topic - the kid is gonna be messed up in later life and in therapy till he's dead. If I ever lost something that important, my parents would tell me tough luck. (I never lost Wrinkles :-))

[Rapscallion]

Guest: Find the bear. My wife and I get no sleep at night because he cries all the time about it. This is my last phone call. Next time, I am sending the police.

"Hello, police. What is your emergency, please? I see, so your son lost a stuffed animal on holiday and you want us to arrest everyone there? Why don't I ask your local deputies to come to your place and explain to you what an emergency is, hmm?"

Rapscallion

[LambChop]

But seriously. Counseling? For a teddybear? Kid'll probably have forgotten about it by next week.

"Waaah! Waaah! I want my teddy bear! I want my tedd- Ooo, SpongeBob! *runs off as little kids tend to do*"

Seriously, dude needs to get off the "Wahmbulance" and start actually parenting his child.

[Balgram]

...When I was a kid I had 2 stuffed animals I really loved. Both vanished mysteriously. I rarely had them outside the house, and to this day I don't know what happened to either one.

One of them was given to me after a tough surgery in the hospital. That little dog Sunshine went through a lot, and was grungy, and I was paranoid that my parents threw him out. They swear up and down that they would never, and I eventually believed them.

The other was Dragoon, who I inherited. He was a dragon. You could flip parts of his body around so he went from big, mean and purple to small, gentle and pink. I played with him all the time.

...

...Now I really miss Sunshine and Dragoon. I'm over it (really) but I still miss my old toys occasionally.

I certainly don't need COUNSELING, and I think if my parents made a big deal out of it it would have been worse. Just get over it, parents. Sheesh.

I still keep stuffed animals in my room. I've managed to throw out nearly 300 of them since going to college, so now they take up half of a bookshelf and part of the mirrior stand, instead of most of my bed, floor, and cupboard space. I don't need to hold or sleep with them, I just like having them. I kept about 20, and I love them all, but if I lost any on vacation I'd know it was my own fault. Yeesh. Take some responsibility for your child and get some spares.

[depechemodefan]

OT, but talking about toys, I just went to McDonalds and bought 4 of the Star Wars bobblehead toys.

Now I don't trust my co-workes not to steal them, or else I would have them out on my desk.