sometimes plushies make me cry because it’s like. they’re little guys made to be loved. their only purpose is to be held and hugged and loved. we made them because we love making things and we love loving things. and they’re so cute
Years back, I was working at a specialty store, and we got this HUGE crate of plushy toys. They were all insanely cute and squishy. I knew kids would go nuts for them, as it was the first week of December, so parents and grandparents often had kids with them while shopping for furniture, lamps, cooking equipment, lights, etc.
One night, I was working my last hour of my shift covering the Customer Service desk, which meant when I wasn’t busy, I was supposed to help clean up around the cash registers, including taking back items people changed their minds about at the checkout. Earlier, I had witnessed a kid carrying thos cute plushy toy. It was a brown and white hedgehog. The kid, at the checkout, saw a remote control car and he told his dad he qanted it. The dad told him, “The plushy or the car- you can’t have both” (by the way, I respect boundaries with kids and parents sticking to their guns about it), and the kid picked the car.
So, I’m cleaning up, have less than an hour left of my shift, and I see the little plushy hedgehog. Somehow, he never got put back nor had anyone else seen him and decided to buy him. He was just sitting there, slumped to the side, unattended.
It’s Christmas and I’m a sentimental old sap at heart. My brain starts replaying the scene from RUDOLPH where he’s on the Island of Misfot Toys, and is told a toy is never truly happy until it is loved. I picked him up and quickly took him back to the bin with the plushies but… It was empty. He was literally the last plushy toy and my boss was about to wheel the bin out. We weren’t getting any more toys till November, so that meant any toys left at this point needed to sell or they’d be sent to the dump.
I brought the little hedgehog to the front, figuring someone would see him with the candy, candles, & Christmas brick-a-brack, and fall in love with him. When I finished my shift, I went to ask my manager a question and as I passed the Christmas candle display - there he sat, the sad little slumped over hedgehog plushy. No one had bought him, or even moved him.
My manager, Phillip, saw me and the hedgehog. He asked how the hedgehog got there. I told him how I’d put him there when the bin got sent back, and he was the only plushy left. Philip had kids, I figured he’d probably get sentimental and buy it for his kids. Nope. He shrugged and said he’d send it back to be disposed of.
That night, I came home with a plushy hedgehog in my passenger seat. My mom saw him and just thought he was the cutest little hedgehog and asked what I wanted to do with him. I told her the story, then added I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with him.
My mom is a child psychiatrist, specializing in children with PTSD and brain damage that results in learning problems/issues with processing their emotions. She asked if she could have the plushy hedgehog (even offered to pay me for him, she didn’t expect me to just give him over), so kids could hug him when they were upset in session.
Murphy, the plushy hedgehog that still slumps a little to the left when seated, has been hugged by hundreds of kids. Little girls have held him tight while explaining about bullies, little boys have held him tight while crying over their panic attacks, younger siblings have held him to whisper secrets while elder siblings and parents talk about self-soothing techniques, teenagers have hugged Murphy while talking about the worst day of their lives. Murphy has also been hugged by kids excitedly chatting about a new friend at school, a teen girl excited to be called by her name instead of her dead-name, little kids proudly saying they’ve mastered their ABCs, and even staff members who just need to come chat over a case they are having trouble with.
Every now and then, my mom brings Murphy home for a weekend. He gets washed (she calls it a Spa Weekend, to her coworkers, all of them laughing), dried, and sits outside with my mom in the sunshine to get aired out, then on Monday, they are back to work. Some kids even just ask to hold Murphy while they talk, no matter their mood or what they want to talk about. They just want to hug Murphy.
So yes. Plushies are made for one purpose. To be hugged and loved. To be a comfort.
I’m a cat enthusiast and i can tell you, the kitty is actually trying to help! (or just trying to figure out what humane is doing by also touching it)
Cats like to mimic what other members if their cat groups are doing. In human enviroments, this translates to cats following humans (who they see as part of their group) and trying to mimic activities they are doing.
Human sits on couch? Cat sit with them! Human reading or on their computer? Cat go after human and sprawl over them or the keyboard because cat do the same! Human eating? Cat also want eat! Human touch spining clay and make weird shapes? Cat also do that! Cat help!
hey if you’re stuck being in church this sunday here’s a reminder that it’s completely free to think about gay sex and no one can tell. the government doesn’t want you to know this but jesus thinks it’s totally cool
Ok so I’m taking a genetics class right now and in lab we’ve been given fruit flies with different mutations that we need to breed over the course of the semester.
Now, first thing I learned: fruit flies don’t eat fruit. They eat yeast. They eat the yeast on fermenting fruit. They can not actually eat fruit. Their name is a lie.
Secondly, one of the two mutant lines I was given to cross are flies with the apterous mutation, aka they’re wingless. I feel so bad for them, they can’t do the one thing they’re named for, they cant fly.
And then I realized. My fruit flies are in truth insects that eat yeast and can’t fly.
Anyways, I’ve been calling them my yeast crawls and I am their god now.
Anyways, I’ve been
calling them my yeast crawls and
I am their god now.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
You’re the town’s superhero. Your greatest enemy is the town’s supervillian. However, secretly, your both brothers. This isn’t anything tragic, as your whole destructive rivalry is actually just a massive prank on your third brother, the mayor.
finally, a realistic sibling relationship in the media
hang on lemme bring this to the resident ducktales fan in the verdict household
Sisyphus had to roll stuff up a hill. You can clearly see theres no room to roll here. No, this poor figure is forced simply to hold his burden where it is for all eternity. Thus:
having offline colleagues is really funny because I had one of them say to me did you know people write their own stories about Star Wars? like they don’t publish it they just post it online for free? And I’m like yeah man that’s nuts right
forget medieval peasants dying after drinking mountain dew if I told my extremely normie office colleagues about the brony cum jar they would be sent to the hospital
