I found a list of about 500 writing prompts and this was the first one on it. I am going to try going through the list, one-by-one and see what comes out of it.

My most precious childhood possession is one that I still have, the stuff bear that my father gave to me the day I was born, April 1, 1965. Once I was a little older, I named it “Teddy”. Teddy is a 12″ tall bear with brown legs, arms, head, and back and a pink stomach. So I’m sure the first question that comes to your mind is, :why a a man give his newborn son a teddy bear with a pink stomach. Remember, this was 1965 so pink was for girls and blue was for boys. The reason for the pink was that the entire time that my mother carried me, the doctors told her that she was going to have a girl. In fact, when I was born and the doctor took me to my mother for the first time, he said “Congratulations Mrs. Atherton, you have a beautiful baby boy.” She did not believe him, she thought he was playing an April Fool’s joke on her. She told him that she only had girl’s clothes and other things and she knew that she was having a girl, so stop trying to pull one over h her. He had to prove to her that I was a boy. This is why my dad had bought a pink teddy bear instead of a blue one.

Teddy is the one thing that has been a constant in my life from the first day up through today, more than 53 years later. He is not in the best of conditions. He is missing an ear and an eye, has been re-stuffed at least once, has some holes in him at points where the pink portion was sewn onto the brown portion. The pink part is no longer pink, it is stained and basically gray. The “fur” is now flat and not at all soft. He was lost and then found again several times.

Teddy went everywhere with me until I started kindergarten when I was five years old. I remember crying when my mom would not let me take him with me. I did manage to take him at least once… Every Friday we had “show-and-tell” and Teddy was my first object for this exercise. Teddy never went back… He didn’t like it there. The other kids made fun of him because he had a pink belly.

I once found a little poem in a magazine that perfectly fit Teddy.