Girls Rule!

Everyone was outside in the back yard once again. A noisy game of softball occupied most of the older teds. Waldo served as bat bear. Gracie hovered overhead, acting as umpire. Not that many of the teds could hear her calls. Then, again, not many of them were paying much attention to her calls anyway. In fact, some of them did not seem quite as steady on their paws as they might have been, possibly because someone had opened up a canner of Mason’s root beer, and the teddy elixir was flowing rather freely out on the field.  

Shoshonna and the littlest ones were playing a game of London Bridge, while Bentley slept quietly on one edge of the picnic blanket, tucked neatly into his blanky. The temperature was only in the mid-80s, and Bentley rarely emerged from hibernation before the temperature reached 90.

Birnie was tuning his bright red Bearcat Biplane in preparation for his next bombing raid. Biwi was sitting quietly up in his tree house, panning his camera here and there over all of the activity going on.  

Itsy and Lily-pop sat next to Bentley on the picnic blanket. Itsy had long ago taken Bentley under her wing, even though he is at least ten times her size. “Oh, she’s just greedy,” grumbles Benjamin. “She likes to lay claim to anything she can get her paws on. It’s not like Bentley can speak up for himself or argue back. After all, he’s pretty much comatose most of the time.”

“Bentley needs me,” Itsy asserts each time Benjamin raises that complaint. “I’m his nurtzs.”

“’Nurse’ my arse,” Benjamin growls.

“Oh, Benjamin, let her be,” Letta or Shoshonna or someone else will say then. “She’s just having fun. Besides, Bentley loves the attention, when he’s awake.”

Right now Brighton was helping Benjamin work on the speech he plans to give for the upcoming Teddy Bear College Fun Raiser. Benjamin, as Chairbear of TBC, hosts the event.

“Okay, for now skip ahead to the part where you say why the Fun Raiser is so important, dear,” Brighton encourages him.

Meanwhile, Itsy had decided to play teacher with Lily-pop, another of her favorite games. “Remember, Lily-pop,” she said, “always say please. When you tell somebody please, they have to do what you say. It’s a rule!”

“Yeth, I know,” replied Lily-pop in her high, piping voice. “You teached me that already. Teach me something new! Please!”

“Hrrumph!” snorted Benjamin. But then he straightened up, looked out at his imaginary audience, and began, “Okay, I say welcome and all that. Then: Having a Fun Raiser is so vital because even though teddy bears are made for playing and snuggling and having fun, they also need to learn stuff, too.”

Ignoring Benjamin completely, Itsy continued with her lessons. “Now I will teach you to count from 1 to 10,” she told Lily-pop, who, as usual, listened with rapt attention to her older sister, whom she adores. “Okay, now, repeat after me: one.”

“One,” repeated Lily-pop.

Benjamin struggled to ignore Itsy and continue with his speech. “It’s important that teddy bears learn stuff because if they don’t, they can’t always tell what’s true and what isn’t.”

“Good,” Itsy encouraged, Lily-pop. “Next comes two.”

“Twooo,” said Lily-pop very carefully.

“Because,” continued Benjamin with a mighty effort, doing his utmost to ignore Itsy and Lily-pop, “if you don’t learn stuff, people can tell you anything, and you’ll believe them, even if it isn’t true!”

“Very good,” Itsy told Lily-pop. “Now, say ten!” she instructed, holding both front paws high up in the air.

“Ten!” repeated Lily-pop, clapping her paws together.

“If you don’t know any better,” gritting his teeth, Benjamin forced himself to continue, “people can tell you the biggest lies, and you’ll never know any better!”  

“There, now,” Itsy encouraged Lily-pop, “say them all together: one, two, ten!”

“One, two, ten!” Lily-pop repeated sprightly.

“See,” Itsy told her, “that was easy, wasn’t it? Now you can count from one to ten!”

“Yeth, that was easy!” squeaked Lily-pop, hopping up and down with glee.

Biwi had to put his camera down on the floor of the tree house because he was laughing so much.

Benjamin could stand it no longer. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he proclaimed, indignantly. “That’s not how you count from 1 to 10!”

 “Don’t listen to him, Lily-pop,” Itsy told her younger sister, who was sitting looking confused. “He’s jus’ a boy, and boys don’t know nuffing.”

Biwi nearly fell out of his tree house, he was rolling around up in the branches and laughing so hard.

“What do you mean I don’t know noth…, I mean, anything?!” Benjamin protested. “I’m a Ph.B., and I’m Chairbear of Teddy Bear College, for heaven’s sake. You can’t even count from 1 to 10!”

“There, there, my sweet,” Brighton said, trying to smooth Benjamin’s ruffled fur. “She’s just a child, a little innocent. Give her time to grow and learn.”

Benjamin calmed down some under his dear-heart’s caresses, but still he grumbled, “She’ll never learn anything. She never does.”

“I don’t need too,” Itsy protested. “I’m a girl. I know everyfing.”

“OoOh!” Benjamin huffed.

“Jus’ don’t listen to him, Lily-pop,” Itsy said, turning her attention back to her little sister. “He’s a boy. Boys don’t know nuffing. They’re filfy, nasty creetures, and you can’t trust ‘em to do nuffing right!”

“Oh, they’re not all that bad,” Letta murmured, smirking slightly. “Though I do agree they require a lot of handling. You have to keep an eye on them at all times, or they’re certain to screw something up.”

Just then Biwi was laughing so hysterically that he burped and farted at the same time, which only made him laugh all the harder. Birnie looked up from his plane and started laughing too.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Biwi!” Benjamin said disgustedly, but that only made Biwi and Birnie laugh all the louder, at which point Letta joined in the general merriment as well. Then Shoshonna started laughing, which made the little ones giggle and hoot. Even Gracie joined in with her tinkling laughter. Pretty soon everyone in the back yard, other than Benjamin, was laughing and hooting, even though most of them didn’t know what they were laughing at. The Mason’s was flowing more freely than ever.

Meanwhile, Itsy, who didn’t know why everyone was laughing so much, took the opportunity to get in one more lesson. “Jus’ remember, Lily-pop, girls rule! And boys drool!”

At that Biwi did fall out of his tree house, right on top of Bentley. Neither was hurt, of course. Bentley didn’t miss a snore, and Biwi kept right on rolling on the ground, laughing his head off. 

“Humph! I don’t know what’s so funny,” Benjamin groused before turning back to practice his Fun Raising speech. Brighton tried very hard not to let her smile show. Lily-pop was asleep by now, leaning up against Bentley’s nice soft belly, all tuckered out from her lessons. Itsy’s voice could barely be heard as it rose up out of the depths of the woods, “Skirl! Com’ere, skirl!” The whole back yard was an explosion of laughter by now. The very air itself seemed to sparkle and shine.

For Heaven's Sake

Most of the teds were having a Teddy Bear Picnic outside on a blanket on the grass at the edge of the woods behind the house. Shoshonna, the big, soft, coffee brown, disco-dancing bear was showing the little ones, Faith, Sweetie, Chuffy, Lily-pop, Waldo, and Sparky, how to hold their little teddy tea cups so that their tea with wildflower honey wouldn’t spill. Benjamin and Brighton were off under a tree, rubbing snouts and canoodling.  

Itsy had spied a squirrel and was busily chasing after it into the woods, shouting, “Skirl! Com’ere! Com’ere, skirl!”

“Don’t go very far into the woods, Itsy!” Shoshonna shouted after her.

“Sure!” Itsy’s reply echoed from somewhere deep within the woods.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” muttered Benjamin before resuming his canoodling with Brighton.

I was sitting in my lounge chair on the deck, listening to the Chicago Cubs’ game on the radio. It was early innings yet. Biwi was there, too, sitting cross-legged on one of the railings, training his digital video camera on me, hoping for another of my apparently hilarious silly-human-bean moments. Birnie was seated atop another railing, plotting out his next anti-terrorist attack. He won’t say where it is to take place. Letta was curled up under her own little umbrella painting her claws a brilliant honey-bee yellow.

Mr. Fluffy, polar bear, teddy theologian, and Unibearian minister was seated at a table with his honey bear partner and best buddy, Kippy, a quiet, serious, teddy linguist. They were drinking tea and honey and munching honey cakes, while discussing their plans for recording the oral traditions of teddy spiritual beliefs in Teddish, the traditional teddy language.

Above us all flew the lovely Gracie, her silk gown flowing in the air as she flapped her gossamer wings and hummed to herself. Gracie rarely says much, but she does hum a lot, and quite beautifully, too. She has the voice of an angel, and the disposition, too.

From what I could gather from Kippy and Mr. Fluffy’s conversation, teddy spiritual teachings go rather further back in time than I had imagined, back into antiquity, apparently. I was curious about that, so I asked them, “What are the earliest known teddy spiritual teachings?”

“Oh, that would be the sutras of the first Body Softa,” Mr. Fluffy noted reverently.

“Do you mean the Buddhist sutras?” I asked. “I thought the Buddha wrote those.”

“Actually, he simply transcribed his teddy bear’s teaching,” Kippy tartly informed me.

“Let me guess: his teddy bear’s name was Body Softa.”

“Yes,” Mr. Fluffy affirmed. “He was the first Body Softa.”

“There have been many incarnations of the Body Softa since that time, of course,” Kippy noted. “In fact, Biwi is rumored to be one of the most recent incarnations.”

“Biwi is a Body Softa?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Fluffy, smiling up at Biwi.

Biwi just snickered, while zooming his camera in for a close-up on my face.

“Another famous tradition began with the Tao de Ching,” Mr. Fluffy continued.

“I thought Lao Tzu wrote that,” I said. “Oh, wait. Don’t tell me. He just wrote down what his teddy dictated, right?”

“Yes, of course,” said Kippy. “That was Fuzzy Tzu, the esteemed teddy Taoist.”

Just then Itsy raced out of the woods. “The skirl ranned away!” she pouted.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Benjamin just couldn’t contain himself.

Itsy cast a puzzled look at Benjamin a moment, then ran up to the deck and asked, “What’s a heaven?”

“Oh, my, little one,” Mr. Fluffy murmured, “that is a big question.” Gracie flew over and hovered a little ways above Itsy’s head, intrigued by the turn of conversation.

“Okay,” Itsy allowed indifferently. “So what is it?”

“I suppose you could call it a positive state of mind,” ventured Kippy.

 “Yeah, but where is it?” Itsy wanted to know, scratching behind her left ear and looking more puzzled than ever. “How do you get there?”

A brief silence enveloped everyone on the deck at this question. Into which, without raising his snout from his plans, Birnie interjected, “Take step by careful step.”

To which Biwi, chuckling, added, “Laugh a lot.”

“Follow your heart,” offered Letta before blowing on her newly-painted claws.

“That can’t be right,” Itsy objected.

“Why not?” asked Kippy.

“’Cause your heart don’t go nowhere. It’s right here all the time, right where you are!” Itsy replied, placing a paw over her heart.

“From the mouths of babes,” whispered Kippy.

“Indeed,” said Mr. Fluffy, reaching across the table to tenderly pat the paw of his beloved Kippy.

Indeed.

Cheers erupted from the radio. Bases loaded and nobody out. Gracie lowered her wand and sprayed Itsy with a shower of glittering fairy dust.

Itsy sneezed, “A-choo!” Then she caught sight of a squirrel’s tail in the woods. “Skirl!” she yelled excitedly, running off to give chase. “Com-ere, skirl! Com’ere!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Benjamin roused himself to half-heartedly complain. Then he snuggled back up with Brighton and settled down with everyone else for the rest of a quiet, sleepy afternoon.

Hold the Fort

I walked into the bedroom today to find Itsy on the bed laboriously pulling a pillow over to join two others already lined up at right angles.

“Uh, uh,” she huffed and she puffed, trying to line the pillow up at a right angle to one of the other two pillows.

Her sweet little Polar bear sister, Lily-pop, second youngest of the teds, and her little brother, Waldo, a honey bear and youngest of them all, were seated calmly in the middle of the three pillows.

“So, what are you doing now, Scamp?” I asked Itsy.

“I’m Itsy, not Scamp,” she protested, looking up at me in exasperation, her bonnet askew as ever.

“Okay, Itsy dear, so what are you about?” I inquired again.

“I’m about to make a fort,” she informed me, turning to retrieve a fourth pillow for her fort. That’s when I noticed her new toy cannon situated on top of the middle pillow already in place.

“What do you need a fort for?” I asked. I couldn’t help it; I was curious.

“To keep the mons’ers out,” she patiently explained, starting to tug the fourth pillow over to her fort.

“What monsters?”

“The ones that will bite you if you don’t look out.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about any monsters if I were you. We don’t have any around here,” I reassured her.

“Uh, huh!” she insisted, pushing the fourth pillow into position. “Benjamin said.”

“I did not!” Benjamin suddenly piped up, quite indignantly.

“Did, too!” Itsy avowed.

“Did not!”

“All right, you two, enough already. What did you think Benjamin said, Itsy?”

“He said look out, or the mons’er called Realty will get you,” she explained, jumping down from her fourth pillow into the middle of her fort. “It’s okay, Lily-pop and Waldo, Itsy will perteck you!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I said no such thing,” Benjamin protested. “I don’t even believe in Realty.”

“You don’t believe in reality?” I asked. “Why not?”

“’Cause people who b’lieve in Realty don’t b’lieve in us,” he pouted. “I think they’re scared of teddy bears.”

“Oh, come on, Benjamin,” I objected, “just what exactly is there about teddy bears to be afraid of?”

“Nothing! But they don’t know that!” Benjamin opined, much affronted. “Just because we’re pretend is what scares ‘em, I think.”

“I don’t see why pretend need scare people who believe in reality,” I said. “After all, reality and pretend pretty much complement each other for those of us with imagination.”

“Yeah, well, all I know is you can’t turn your back on Realty, or it’ll bite you!”

“See!” shouted Itsy, who was now jumping excitedly up and down on the bed in the middle of her pillow fort. “See, I tol’ you!” she exclaimed gleefully, hopping up onto the pillow where her toy cannon was sitting. “The Realty mons’er’ll bite you if you don’t look out!”

“KWOOMPf!” went her cannon.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Benjamin said with exaggerated exasperation, rolling his eyes and looking askance at his younger sister.

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about reality, if I were you,” I assured the two of them, along with all of the other teds who had been listening attentively to our conversation. “Reality won’t be rearing its ugly head in this house any time soon.”

“Okay, good,” said Itsy, who had now moved on to jumping excitedly from pillow to pillow of her fort, exclaiming, “Jump! Jump! Jump!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Benjamin grumped once more as I hastily exited the room.

Who is Michael Jackson?

The teds were playing today, wreaking havoc as usual, when little Itsy the Panda – aka “Itsy the Terror” – looked up from the toy cannon she got for her birthday last week and asked, “Who is Michael Jackson?”

Her older brother Benjamin, being the sententious little brown and yellow know-it-all that he is, immediately corrected her. “Was,” he said.

“Huh?” said Itsy in return, her bonnet slipping down over her eyes, as it usually does.

“Was,” Benjamin repeated, obviously reveling in his sense of superiority. “You mean, ‘Who was Michael Jackson.’ He’s dead now.”

“Oh,” said Itsy. “Yeah. Well, who was he, then?”

“Why do you want to know?” asked Letta, the sleek, low purr of her voice matching her sleek honey-colored fur and enduring beauty.

“’Cause he’s always on the television,” Itsy replied. “Dad and Mommola always complain no serious news gets on because everybody’s always talking about Michael Jackson instead.” As if to emphasize this, she then shot off her cannon, “Ka-WHOOMPF!”

“Damn, did you have to shoot that off right next to my ear?” Benjamin complained, rubbing his ears in dismay, as his beautiful, shiny-white girlfriend, Brighton, kissed and soothed him.

“Sorry,” Itsy blithely replied, while setting about to reload. “But why does everybody always talk about him all the time on television?”

“I guess because he was a celebrity,” said Letta, as she licked the fur of her left wrist, giving it a super shine, in preparation for a hot date tonight. Besides, she likes to keep herself well groomed.

“So?” said Itsy, as she lugged another huge shell over to her cannon. “What’s a celeberty?”

“Somebody who gets a lot of attention for doing incredibly stupid things,” Benjamin declaimed, with his usual lugubrious sense of edgy authority.

“Actually,” observed Biwi, the younger (by 8 seconds) of the twin Pandas, Biwi and Birni, “he was a great singer, songwriter, and dancer before he began doing things some people considered incredibly stupid.”  

The twins are accorded much respect among the other teds. Biwi is the comedian and documentarian of the duo. Birni is the munitions and anti-terrorist expert. Their combined talents give them an almost unlimited potential for wreaking havoc, which is why they are accorded such great respect by the other teds. So when one of them speaks, the others tend to listen, except perhaps for Benjamin.

 “Well, he hasn’t done any singing or dancing in a really long time,” Benjamin pointed out.

“So why does everybody always talk about him on the television, then?” Itsy asked, after plopping the next shell into her cannon.

“Because he’s dead,” said Benjamin.  

“What’s that got to do with it?” asked Letta, checking her lashes in her paw mirror.

“People can say whatever they want now,” Benjamin pointed out, “and he can’t talk back.”

“Oh,” said Itsy, a puzzled expression peeking out from under her bonnet.

“Besides,” added Benjamin, who was on a roll now, “the television people are probably mad because now he’s dead they won’t be able to make any more money off him when he does stupid things.”

“But the record companies and his family are really going to rake it in now that he’s gone to join Elvis,” Biwi noted ruefully.

“Oh,” said Itsy, still puzzled but obviously growing tired of the subject.

At this point Birni decided to have what turned out to be the last word, “It’s a bit like kicking a dead horse.”

“Oh,” said Itsy again. “Ka-WHOOMPF!” went her cannon.

“Itsy!” yelled Benjamin.

“What?” asked Itsy, as she headed for another shell.