Strange Bedfellows 12/11/2022

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

My daughter’s bed is an outright menagerie of creatures. They are an unlikely group. You certainly wouldn’t run into this bunch in natural circumstances.  She also has a very specific order in which her bedmates must lay. Now of course once the morning comes, they could be in any sort of arrangement including flung on the floor.  She told me a few weeks ago that if I didn’t know the order in which they had to sleep with her that I didn’t truly know her. Now of course, I balked at this considering I would say that I know her better than anyone else, but she was adamant, so I obliged and proceeded to put in the effort and learn her guidelines for her nighttime friends.

I am not sure if they are arranged in order of importance but first, we have Ginger.  She is a small orangish stuffed cat.  She was actually mine. Interestingly enough, my mother bought her for me when I was very much not a child. I was twenty when I was in a very severe car accident.  During my recovery I suppose she felt that I needed a cuddly friend. This is the first companion placed in the bed with my daughter and of course the fact that she loves it despite it being ancient enough to be mine warms my heart. I am less enamored by the fact that my cat loves this toy also as he enjoys grabbing it and flopping about with it as if it were trying to wrestle him.  My daughter is not keen on these interactions either as she is sure that her beloved Ginger will be injured.  So yes, there is the occasional search and rescue for Ginger when her living counterpart decides she makes a good playmate.  Other than that, the little orange cat seems happy enough to be the first of many.

Up next, we have Sox. He is a character from a movie. However, my daughter has never seen this movie and has no desire to. She liked him because he was a good-looking cat when she saw him in the store.  He actually talks with lines from the aforementioned movie, but she doesn’t particularly care for that fact, so she rarely uses his speech capabilities.  I don’t know that I have ever actually seen her play with Sox in any context. She was insistent to have him when she saw him in the store. If I remember correctly my mother was with us and after some ridiculous dramatics, she caved to my daughters whining in classic grandma fashion.  But since he got home, the only activity for the cat is to sleep with my daughter in his appropriate ordinal placement.

Third in the lineup is Stardust.  She is a unicorn with purple mane and tail and rainbow stars all over her white fur.  I am not sure why she chose this unicorn of her countless options of the species to be her sleeping companion since she has many more that are far nicer in all senses of the word. I think she got Stardust as a prize in an arcade.  If you know anything about arcade prizes that should tell you that she isn’t of the most desirable quality. But she loves her.  She actually seems to prize her more than a lot of her stuffed unicorns which I still for the life of me cannot understand.  But that is appropriate.  My daughter’s mind often, if not usually, works in ways that I don’t particularly understand.

Moving closer from the edge of the bed in toward the middle we have Angus.  He is a fuzzy stuffed Highland Cow.  I admit I got this for my daughter in a bit of a vicarious living moment. She does share my love for a good Scottish accent and when she first saw the long-haired Highland cattle, she loved them. So, since I wanted it myself, I got it for her.  She is quite fond of him and it’s probably silly of me, but I am a bit proud that something I picked out gets to sleep so close to her, assuming that closer to her is order of importance.

Actually, Angus was the bed fellow that was closest to her until just last month when we went to the mountains.  While on that trip she picked up another member to add to the collection.  While in a shop at one of the visitors’ centers of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park she was overwhelmed by a forest’s worth of plush animals.  I could tell by the look in her eye that some furry something was going to be coming home with us.  I cannot say that of her plethora of options that I saw her choice coming.  We left the store with a baby possum.  It came to be known as Precious and is now her closest critter in her bed. Not every new stuffed creature she gets has the honor of taking a place on the bed, so I suppose Precious was very special.

I am not certain why I felt the need to share with you what my daughter bunks down with every bedtime.  I am thinking now trying to decide what exactly inspired me to tell this tale.  All I can come up with is, is that every time my daughter insisted knowing the order of her bed fellows to prove that I knew her, it just struck some kind of chord with me. She is quirky and unique just like them.  If nothing else they do show that she is certainly no respecter of person, or animal.  There is never a dull moment with her, and I love her dearly for it.  I can’t wait to see what new little bit of her imagination will be revealed with the next addition to the collection.