Take Away the Stuffing

It was going to destroy me. 

Little black orbs, devoid of personality, locked their gaze with mine. The rowdy children around faded away. No matter how long I tried to scare it, to intimidate it with my growls, to put fire into my eyes, it refused to look away. Its arms dangled by its side, hiding no weapons or explosives. A little cute pink ribbon was tied around its neck, flapping in the cooling breeze. As if to hide its true danger behind a layer of innocence.

With a rush of adrenaline, I pounced on the little girl in a princess tiara playing make-believe, grabbing her from behind and pulling her away. The girl shrieked, wriggling in my arms, but I tried to soothe her, whispering, hissing, “Don’t worry, this is for your own good.” 

Then I yanked out the little brown teddy bear wrapped in her arms.

Before I was able to think, to feel, a mess had already been left in the grass in front of me, the baseball bat quivering in my hands coated with stuffing.   

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At home, I dump my backpack next to the door in my room and push past fuzzy carcasses of tigers and dogs, broken train set parts, used batteries littered across the ground; the Star Wars lego buildings I’d received for my fifth birthday, now smashed and half deconstructed. I laid the carcass against the wall with the others. I smile as I think of how many kids I’ve saved, how many I’ve helped for the better.

And then… I recall the day my parents came home without my grandmother. They had taken her to the “special place” they brought her to once or twice a month. When I asked where she had gone, they patted me on the head, gave me a big smile and a little teddy bear, and told me that she had simply left to visit a friend. A week passed, and they told me that she had travelled to a new country. As weeks became months, and then years — the stories became more complex, more desperate — and throughout it all, I kept hoping, praying, naively believing that what they said was true.

But it was a lie. It was always all a lie. Just like all the things in fairy tales and movies, all the happy endings and fairy godmothers and magic spells and all that ‘they all lived happily ever after!’ nonsense — it was all just extra stuffing.

There are always more kids in need. More who I have to help. More who I need to turn away from the illusion, the monster of naivety and make-believe they’ve grown up with their whole. darn. life.

I need to be the one to take away that stuffing.