The Stanley Incident

This is Stanley Yelnats V:

He’s a Build-A-Bear pig whom I made in Downtown Disney.  He’s named after Stanley Yelnats IV from the book Holes, by Louis Sachar.

I got him the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school.  At that time my older sister Button had just graduated from high school and was getting ready to go off to college, my little sister Booger was about to start junior high, and I had just been moved up to the varsity basketball team.  My mom decided that she would reward us all for being so awesome by getting us each a Build-A-Bear.

Button got a classic teddy bear named Taphy (short for Epitaph because she’s weird), Booger got a rabbit named Basil Stag Hare (named for the hare from Brian Jacque’s Redwall).  And I got Stanley the pig.

It worked out pretty well because in just a couple of years I was going to be going off to college, and like any other newly-pretending-to-be-an-adult college student, I needed a stuffed animal to take with me.

When I was a little kid I had tons and tons of stuffed animals, but I never had any one that was My Stuffed Animal whom I took everywhere with me and needed for comfort.  Instead I had a blanket.  It was called my Rabbit Blanket (or my Rabby Blanky) and it looked like this:

Nowadays it’s more like this:

It looks like it’s been through a blender because it’s a ridiculously old baby blanket.  It’s actually older than I am.  It’s 25 years old, just like my sister Button.  It’s her age because it was originally her blanket.

When she was two years old and I was born, my parents asked her if she would like to be a good big sister and give the new baby her baby blanket, and she said, “Why, certainly, Mother and Father.  I would be honored to part with this symbol of infancy for the good of my recently acquired sibling.  I shall henceforth go blanketless into the great world!”

(So I might be exaggerating a little bit, but I’m sure I’m not THAT far off.  Button has always been super eloquent, and one time she startled her doctor by using the word “actually” at an inappropriately young age.)

Anyway, toddler Button gave her blanket to me.

Four years later, Booger was born and my parents asked me if I would like to be a good big sister and continue the tradition by giving the new baby my baby blanket.

I said, “No.”

And so it’s stayed mine for 23 years.

And I don’t regret my selfishness one bit.

I love that blanket.

A blanket is the perfect kid’s security item because you can hug it like any other stuffed animal, but you can also wrap it around you if you’re cold.  Or you can spread it out on the carpet for a pretend picnic, or you can use it as part of a furniture fort.  Try doing all of that with a teddy bear.  I’ll give you a hint:  YOU CAN’T.

It’s always been one of my most prized possessions.  For some reason I used to be terrified that my dad was going to burn our house down whenever he lit a fire in our fireplace during the winter.  I was SURE we were all going to die, and so I would always gather up all my most important belongings that I couldn’t live without and stand on the stairs, ready to run at the first stray spark.  My most important belongings always started with my rabbit blanket, and usually also included whatever allowance I had and an extra set of underpants.

I loved and I love my rabbit blanket, but there was no way I was taking it to college with me.  It was just a little too blatantly a baby blanket for a dorm room.  So I left it behind.

Stanley, however, was the perfect replacement.  A pig in corduroys was exactly the right amount of ridiculous to come with me.  And so Stanley Yelnats V went to college.

Maybe halfway through my first year, my roommate Alias got her own stuffed animal.

He’s either a chick or a ducky—I’ve never quite been sure which—and he’s made of that stretchy spandex-y fabric and filled with little Styrofoam beads.  He wears a bow tie and his name is Mr. Fabulous. 

Shortly after Mr. Fabulous was introduced to our dorm room, Alias was experimenting with him and his weird flexible body.  She put him in Stanley’s clothes.

She flattened him into a fabulous puddle.

She threw him against the wall. 

He bounced harmlessly back onto her bed. 

It was funny, so she did it again.

It was still funny, so I picked up Stanley and threw HIM against the wall.  He hit with a dull THUD and slid sadly down the wall and onto the floor, where he lay face-down in a dead heap.

Alias and I were both horrified by my heartlessness.

We swore never to talk about The Stanley Incident ever again, which of course meant that Alias told everyone she knew and ever met.

And…now I’m telling you, for some reason.

Anyway.  Now you know my deepest darkest secret about the deepest darkest day of my life—the day I hurled my beloved Stanley Yelnats V against a dorm room wall and let him fall in a heap to the floor.