Fuzzy was the name of my sister Anne's favorite stuffed brown bear when she was little. I'm not sure why she named him Fuzzy; he wasn't very by the time mom gave him to me. Like dresses, shoes, and school books, all things new funneled their way through my older sisters to me, even treasured stuffed brown bears. So, it's no wonder I renamed him Baldy when I finally got him; he was threadbare! But then, with my four year old speech problems, Baldy came out sounding more like Buddy to everyone else, so Buddy he became.
Buddy went everywhere with me that year - in the car, to the park, to the grocery store with my mother when my sisters were in school. I hate to think I was lonely being home alone with my mother every day, but being the youngest of six children was not something I particularly remember as being entertaining. This is probably why I developed such an attachment to Buddy. He became my confidant, my playmate, and the one on whom I could blame all of my mischievous activities.
"Who did that?" my mother would ask.
"Must've been Buddy!" my sisters would answer.
Finally, the day came when I was finally old enough to attend school, too, and I discovered - to my horror - Buddy would have to stay home! This, of course, would not do, so I stashed him behind my booster seat in the truck before anyone else climbed in. My great plan was to sneak him into my backpack before getting out, and this plan would've worked, too, if it hadn't been for my sister, Anne.
Unbeknownst to me, she'd been pining away for her lost Fuzzy ever since he'd made his way over to my bed and - seeing his feet tucked neatly behind my seat when she climbed in the truck - she devised her own plan to rescue the stuffed brown bear. Imagine my shock! I climb out of the truck that morning, reached behind the seat for my trusted friend and companion, only to discover he'd disappeared! My father and sisters thought my tears were from fear and tried to comfort me as I made my way to the kindergarten room. Only my sister, Anne, whose twinkling eyes should've been a dead giveaway, didn't accompany me. She bound down the hallway to catch up with her new friends, eager, I'm sure, to introduce them to her old one.
But, I never did know where Buddy went. The subject became dinner table fodder that fall - just mentioning Buddy's name would send me into hysterics - something my older sisters enjoyed seeing. It got so just using the word 'buddy' in a sentence would set me off. Oh, I made it through kindergarten fine that year, and went on to make some really good friends , but none were like Buddy.
Buddy turned up, finally, years later when my mother cleaned out Anne's toy chest. There, at the bottom, wrapped in an old t-shirt and stuck inside a plastic bag, she found a sad stuffed bear with absolutely no fur left. He had a tag on him. It read: "My name's Fuzzy!!"
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