Have you heard …

I sat upon the shelf with a bow around my neck
And I tried to sit up still, and to hold my head erect
And I looked at all the children and I tried to look my best
But if you’re a teddy bear, it is rare that you are dressed.

After months upon that shelf I began to feel quite weary
And my head began to droop, and my vision’s rather bleary
When, to my utter joy, they moved me to the front!
So I’m now a favorite toy and I’m no longer the runt.

I had caught the eyes of many, who would stop and start to buy,
But I cost a pretty penny, and the price was much too high.
So I sat inside that window for a month, and then a year,
When it just became too much and so I dropped a tiny tear.

I was put back in the stockroom, and I thought that I would stay,
When the fuzzy rabbit told me, “When it’s nearly Christmas Day,
You will be back in that window and someone will chance to buy.
For how could they resist that lovely twinkle in your eye?”

The bunny gave me courage and I waited till the winter
Even though the floor was wooden and I got a hundred splinters.
And, as Bunny said to me, I went back up on the shelf
But I had lost a lot of hope and did not hope much for myself.

But when the store clerk came and put upon me a new tag,
Sooner than I knew it I was in somebody’s bag!
It was stuffy in the sack, but I did not care at all
Even though I shared the space there with a plastic Barbie doll.

It was hot inside the trunk of the big, black shiny car
So I was grateful when the lady came and told us, “Here we are!”
We were out for just one moment when she put us in more bags,
And I thought that I was done for, so my head began to sag.

I stayed there for one night, then the morn of Christmas Day,
I peeked behind the tissue, and what ended my dismay,
Was that I was in the living room, underneath the Christmas tree!
And finally, oh, finally, someone would come for me!

I spied about four children, all of whom were daughters,
Coming out into the living room, without the mother or father.
And they all began to whisper what they thought were in the socks,
And in this bag, and in that bag, and inside that big old box.

The parents woke up later, and the girls all asked as one,
When on earth they’d open presents, when at the tree they’d run.
“First,” said Daddy, still quite sleepy, “we all have to get awake.
After all, you were the only ones who got up at daybreak.”

So after half an hour, they began to open us,
But they only did one at a time, so’s not to cause a fuss.
The second-youngest one decides, “I’ll save that one for last.”
Seeing that she spoke of me, I waited till an hour passed.

Then, to my delight, I was lifted up and dropped
Into her lap. I smiled when I landed with a ‘plop’.
She opened me and squealed and grinned, and said she’d sleep with me
So that she would not be afraid (the same thing went for me).

She loved me best but for a week, and then I lay, awaiting
On the floor, after the folks were finished with their celebrating.
I got stepped on, I got stomped on, I got trampled to the ground
Until I was buried and I couldn’t hear a sound.

Then, one day, in the summer, when the trees were bright and green,
The mother bid the children to go in their rooms and clean.
I got squished, and I got squashed, and I turned into a pancake,
And I lost a bit of fluff, and began to get a headache.

Thank goodness I don’t breathe, for I’m sure I’d have been dead
From the suffocating other toys which caused pain to my head.
I got shoved and I got pushed and then I could no longer see
And I pondered, and I wondered, “What will happen to poor me?”

Then they found me, picked me up, but then a sister came inside
And she said of me that she was shocked that I had never died,
And with that she told her mother all about what they had done
And I thought, as she related, that these things were not so fun.

Mama said that I was garbage, and to throw me in the can,
When the second youngest daughter heard about the awful plan,
And, weeping, said that she would do her best to keep me good
And she promised she’d take care of me, just as I thought she would.

But the sisters and the mother said that I was quite unfit
For the little girl to play with, so that was the end of it;
I went into the garage, with the other broken toys
And with that I said goodbye to all my happy Christmas joys.

I stayed there for a year, being eaten by the bugs
Until you could not tell the difference between me and a rug
And my eyes were falling out, and my nose no longer was,
And I became quite skinny from the loss of extra fuzz.

I tried so hard to hope, and I tried so hard to sleep
But occasionally I would simply sit in there and weep
And it seemed to be a graveyard in that cold and darkened place,
Where it appeared that one would never see a friendly face.

When the summer rolled around, and again they chanced to come,
I was sad because they did not care that I had lost a thumb,
And I wanted to call out, but because I could not talk
I simply had to sit there and lie down there like a rock.

Mama came in the garage, and I caught her tired eye
And my courage got a bolster, and my hopes were very high,
And she picked me up and brought me in and put me on a chair,
And she asked the second-youngest, “You remember your old bear?”

And I heard the little girl, and she laughed and then she yelled
And inside, I shared her joy, and my spirits were compelled
To climb into the sky, and although I had no eyes,
I was filled with joy, but a teddy rarely cries.

She picked me up and squeezed me, but I never felt as good
For she loved me as she said that, a year ago, she would.
And she kneeled and begged her mother to have me soon repaired
And, surprisingly, in trusting her, I wasn’t really scared.

They drove me to her grandma’s, and there I spent the night
And when I woke, I was surprised to see a blinding light,
And I knew that I could see, and just then the doorbell rang
And the second youngest hugged me, and then my spirits sang!

So now I am all better and I’ve lived here for three years,
And I have been made wiser for my laughter and my tears
And I still live in the bedroom, sometimes buried to the knee,
But still the child comes and says, “Come, Beary, play with me!”

(This probably could have happened, but it’s mostly fiction; I did, however, put our family and one of Adriannah’s old teddy bears in it.) : )