The best friends are stuffed friends.

      Despite having a neighborhood full of kids to play with I still had imaginary friends, and not just one or two I actually commanded an imaginary army, uniforms and all. I never told anyone about this when I was a kid, not even my mom. People already thought I was a little too imaginative for my own good, so I kept a lot to myself. Other than my own personal killing force of hot girls and super human boys (yes, my army was "co-ed" I was very progressive even then), like most kids I also had a favorite stuffed animal; a bean-bag frog named Frederick, yes Fred the frog, not quite as original I know.
      I always held onto the memory of the comfort Fred would bring when I climbed into bed, especially after a bad day. Having a special friend that was only yours to comfort you, to cry on, or to hug your frustrations out with seemed like an important thing for a child to have so I always wanted to make sure my kids had one too.
      After you have a child there is no shortage of stuffed animals, you always pick out something you think your child will like and six dozen friends and relatives do the same. Your child's room quickly goes from a cute scattering of fluffy friends to a scene from a creepy horror movie where every time you enter the room you can feel hundreds of beady eyes on you waiting to rip off your limbs and use you as a throw rug...or maybe that's just me.
      In any case my boys always had more than enough stuffed animals to choose from and with rooms full of dust collecting fuzzballs wouldn't you know that both of them chose to befriend "furries" that belonged to someone else.
      When our oldest arrived we took great care in picking out some of the coolest and cutest stuffed animals we could find, and they accumulated, multiplied and collected dust as he got older. Mom in fact, took great pride in picking out what she thought was the perfect companion for our little "Monster", a big soft adorable dinosaur, but he wasn't interested.
       Now you need to know Mom herself was no stranger to the love of a good stuffed animal, and she still has possession of her childhood friend, a bear named Cindy. I can tell you Cindy was well loved, I some times pity the poor bear and swear I can hear it begging me to put it out of it's misery. Cindy more resembles Frankenbear than Teddy bear. Cindy has had more surgery than Joan Rivers and looks almost as bad. She is missing both eyes, has had her leg sown back on backwards and her poor squished face has been sown back on...I'm referring to the bear not Joan Rivers.
       Despite our combined knowledge of stuffed friends we failed to find the proper companion for our oldest, he on the other hand new what he wanted. One day he wandered into the pantry and found a bag of stuffed animals that was not his, grabbed a hold of a spotted leg and never let go again. He had picked what was to be his childhood companion, a stuffed dalmatian dog named Sprinkles.
      Our little monster took this dog everywhere for more years than I can count, Sprinkles became his best friend, his partner and his towel. We immediately noticed an unsettling similarity between them and Calvin and Hobbes, but psychological examinations proved our child was mostly normal....mostly.
      This relationship was a happy one that lasted through many repairs and washings, but despite our best attempts the black and white Sprinkles to this day has become very gray. Our oldest no longer carries Sprinkles everywhere he goes but he does sit prominently in his room.
      When our younger son came along we thought about our mistakes trying to find a friend for our oldest and bought a couple stuffed dogs and tigers to go along the bears and ducks and dinosaurs, again no luck. We thought for sure this amazingly soft German shepherd would be the one, but no luck.
       One day our little monkey boy wanders into our bedroom grabs a stuffed penguin of mine that was a gift from my wife ( I like penguins ok, and wolves and otters if your truly interested.) and proceeds to walk out of the bedroom hugging it...I never got it back.
      Like our oldest son's dalmatian "Ping" the penguin went EVERYWHERE with him for years, when we went to soccer games it was the stuffed penguin all the other regulars and even the players remembered and commented on. Cashiers and waitresses alike remembered us through Ping the Penguin just as they had Sprinkles the dog before him.
      One day out of no where I looked down and noticed my son didn't have Ping with him he had the amazingly soft German shepherd in his arms. "Where's Ping?" I asked, "He's home", and then he explained that "Shep" was softer. Apparently my son had loved all the soft off of Ping the penguin. For another couple years it was Shep that went everywhere with my son and everywhere we went people wanted to know where Ping was. That's right friends, acquaintances and strangers alike were asking about my son's stuffed penguin. Ping never really went anywhere as my son still cherishes him and never removed him from his place of honor on his bed.
       In case your wondering my wife did eventually replace my penguin with a new one, which I keep on a much higher shelf than before...just in case.

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