teddy bears – WHAT IT IS/WHAT IT IS NOT

BLACKBIRD

blog photo 211 blackbird WHAT IT IS

The stark red numbers of the cheap alarm clock had Graham entrenched in a staring contest he would not win. He rubbed the brows of his eyes in hope of victory, but 3:06 AM was the reply. As he did every time he woke early, his right hand grabbed his left and searched for his two missing fingers; still missing. Trying not to disturb the other sleeping agents, Graham snuck into the kitchen, sat down with a glass of orange juice and became bemused at a strange looking orange teddy bear perched on the refrigerator.

Like most sentient teddy bears, Babs could remain inert for hours or even days and when necessary weeks at a time. Sitting straight and stoic, Babs listened as Graham’s numerous tirades filled the kitchen. Chief among Graham’s rants was the fact INSECT just lost two thousand robotic nano bugs in a fight with No.1’s elite group of insects. Graham’s visceral reaction and obvious distain for No.1, made Babs relieved that he didn’t know it was her who advised No.1 to strike before the robots were fully ready.

While the morning light wrestled into visibility, Graham received a call from Rene Boudreaux in Louisiana. Rene had found the missing four pales of 1,4 Dichloropropene and he and five CHAPS were personally delivering the cargo to Lake Springfield later that week. A beaming Graham left the kitchen and Babs slipped off the refrigerator, congratulated a blackbird on his singing prowess and returned to her cabin.

WHAT IT IS NOT

The conductor said it was a problem with the track, then he said a swarm of grasshoppers flew into the engine’s air intake and finally he admitted that for some unknown reason, the diesel engines just stopped working. An overnight layover just outside Indianapolis was good news for Justine Flagstaff and her beloved teddy bear Leo. She gathered up Leo and her belongings and readied herself for a peaceful night at Mae’s B&B.

On a privately owned, left handed dirt track some eight and a half furlongs long, just outside Greensburg, Indiana a teddy bear sat on top of a flagpole and was soon joined by a dragonfly. The tete-a-tete lasted long into the night with speculation being the only certainty as to what transpired. The night watchman claimed to have heard ticking sounds, reminiscent of the telegraph that then morphed into unfamiliar musical notes, then into syllables and finally words. The confused watchman related that the point that is infinity keeps shifting in this terrestrial world with the abstract rush into oblivion not born of conscious thought, but more of a stupor state of indifference and ignorance. The path stumbles along, gathering up essences for examination and dismissal, more examination and more dismissal until the whole exercise gets lost in political rhetoric, economic bravado and social voodooism. The i’s get dotted, the t’s crossed and the point that was infinity gets changed again. It is most likely that beyond infinity is some kind of paradise a dragonfly may wonder, why we didn’t take advantage of already, because we have it, we had it, but still alludes the clean grasp, the solid hit.

This world of abstractions didn’t touch the dragonfly or the teddy bear in a direct way as they sat on the flagpole, but like a tsunami, they, and the singing blackbirds, would be swept up in it and deposited in a place where paradise was scarce and the point of infinity would change again.

WOOD DECK

blog photo 68 wood deck WHAT IT IS

Ellie was exhausted after her kidnapping and subsequent rescue by Slim Clemons. She would register for University later; what she needed right now was a little R&R up in Teddy Bear country. She thanked Slim repeatedly, hugged Cricket and Sapphire goodbye and immediately found herself in Temagami, Ontario.

After summoning up six other teddy bears, the crew made their way to the top of the fire tower and began swinging from the tops of the trees, attempting to land on the large wooden deck below. Teddy bears have no bones to break and no blood to spill, so the sight of these teddy bears missing, near missing, and landing on the deck must have been amusing.

WHAT IT IS NOT

In his latest adventure with his new love interest, Cricket has joined a drone club, where participants have invented a new game. A small grappling device is attached to the underbelly of the drone, a tennis ball is then fastened to the device and the drone master, in a timed event, must guide the drone over the wooden deck and drop the ball. The ball closest to the center of the deck wins the day.

ELLIE’S STORY CONTINUES

Slim had them put up this sign after his experience.

Ellie's Story Continues...4.jpg

Slim Clemons was a big man, weighing in at 365 pounds. To accommodate his girth, he had a big office, over 5,000 square feet. And, Slim had big ambitions to match his ample size. He was a high-stakes producer, organizing and promoting horse races, sporting events, beauty pageants and music extravaganzas. In addition, Slim had a large investment portfolio consisting of the kind of stocks that produced fast money: start-ups, mining, and energy sources.

Slim loved his fast-paced, high-pressured career, but once a year, he would fire up his luxury 40-foot recreational vehicle and take his family on an ostentatious camping vacation. Despite the luxury accommodation that defined camping in a whole new way, Slim liked a little unexpected adventure built into his vacation. As such, he would sit in his office on the 30^th floor of Salesforce Tower in Indianapolis studying a large map of North America while massaging a dart between his thump and index finger. After counting to ten, Slim would launch the dart, and it would sail toward the map, puncturing the map at the destination towards which Slim would drive the R.V. This year the dart landed on Missaussagga Provincial Park in Northern Ontario, Canada.

This was Slim’s first trip to Northern Ontario, and although the mosquitoes and black flies were considerably bigger than he had expected, and their large numbers were keeping his wife inside the recreational vehicle, Slim was content. On the fourth nightin the wilderness, Slim was reading an old Kurt Vonnegut Jr. novel when something outside the R.V. caught his eye. Always a man of action, Slim grabbed his Glock G19 handgun from the bedside table and headed outside.

The park was dark, as dark as the Alberta oil in which Slim had recently invested. Slim gripped the Glock, his arm outstretched, swaying from side to side. As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, he began to make out small animals scurrying around the forest floor and swinging from tree branches. Suddenly a loud, piercing female voice shattered the silence “Shot one of those teddy bears and that’s it for you Buster.”

Slim heard a high-pitched but muffled scream behind him. He spun around and there was Ellie hanging from a branch just inches away from his face. He backed up, tripped over a rock and crashed to the ground. He looked up at Ellie highlighted by the moon that had serendipitously come out from behind a cloud as if it understood this moment needed to be emphasized. Slim’s heart swelled in his chest: the teddy bear was beautiful. Right at that moment the 2017 Miss Teddy Bear North America Beauty Pageant was hatched in Slim’s mind.