Careful What you Wish

I had a friend once. His name was... uh... Chuckleberry... yea, that’s it! Chuckleberry! Anyways, when Huckleberry.... err, I mean when Chuckleberry was a young boy he had a stuffed animal, a dog it was, a dark brown dog with a tan face and chest. Because his parents (who were quite dim) would refer to the dog as Huckleberry’s... errr, I mean Chuckleberry’s (damn it)... anyways, his parents referred to the stuffed dog as his “Teddy Bear”, so Chuckleberry (also being quite dim and unoriginal) called his stuffed dog “Teddy”.

Like most children with a favorite toy Chuckleberry carried this Teddy Dog everywhere he went. The poor stuffed toy mostly survived it’s treacherous life in the hands of a small boy, albeit with several surgeries, lots of panicked searches, and it being drooled on, vomited on, dropped in toilets, drug by strings, run through washing machines, colored with markers, etc. with no obvious signs of displeasure other than some bald patches and a missing eye, but it was all right, as the stuffed dog had another eye and did not make a big deal of it’s disability.

Chuckleberry’s greatest wish when he was a boy was to give life to that Teddy-Dog, so that it might run, and play, and speak to him. He made the same wish every birthday, and on every first star, wishing that his “Teddy” could be real. The speaking was the biggest thing. When a boy, Chuckleberry had talked constantly to his toy companion, but the stuffed dog never said a word in return, and had only looked back at him through his single dull eye in neither agreement or dissent, nor with even a change of expression. But of course the stuffed dog never came to life... not, that is, until the day that it did!

As will happen, Chuckleberry grew up. He put away his childish things, including his beloved “Teddy”. When he did so he found girls, and then a single girl. He and this girl got an apartment and began to play house (as girls never really put away their toys, do they?) but Chuckleberry’s girl had no baby-doll in this house, and needing one to make the house complete, one day she brought home to their little apartment a little puppy... a brown puppy with a tan face and chest, a cute little “Teddy Dog” of a puppy that ran straight-away to Chuckleberry and laid down on his foot, never again to leave his side.

Man and dog made the best of friends, walking together and talking together (yes, they talked to each other). The girl was jealous at first... it was she who found the puppy, paid for it, got its shots, bought it food and a bed and everything it needed to be happy... but soon she came to appreciate that the bond between dog and man was not malicious, it simply was, and it was a cute bond, at that.

For many years life was perfect. The girl even got a lap dog for herself, and the four of them were as happy as dolls in a playhouse until the day the real-life “Teddy Dog” would not get up. No matter what Chuckleberry said to it, it would not follow him. It did not want to play ball, and it would not go for a walk, and then it would not eat, nor breathe. The Teddy Dog wrenched at Chuckleberry’s heart as though he were still that small boy with a stuffed animal on a string, dragging a one eyed dog through his childish, make-believe world.

But this time it was real. This time there was no “surgery” to sew the dog up, no washing machine to remove the stain. Chuckleberry buried the brown and tan puppy under the shade tree in the yard. As he did so he cursed the many birthday wishes, and the hundreds of “first star” wishes he had made as a boy. He filled in the hole and he cursed God, and he cursed all of those wishes he had made for his stuffed toy to be real.