Stuffed animals for grown-ups

When Jenny was a wittle gurl, she had a whole plush menagerie, including a stuffed lamb with a bell in his ear that she would prop next to the door when she went to bed. A makeshift alarm, she figured it would alert her to any monsters who might want to intrude on her Shawn Cassidy dreams.

Then she grew up and moved Lambie to the back 40 to make room for the plushies that errant boyfriends thought were a teenage dream. She got two different penguins and even a stuffed Cartman for a 30th birthday present. She repressed the memories of the giant crap-ass gorillas and ponies won at various county fairs and boardwalks. She developed a baseline criterion: If it had been touched by a carny, it went straight into a hazmat bag, not onto her bedspread.

Along with her nickname, Jenny’s stuffed animals are long gone. Call her crazy, but when she hugs something, she wants it to have a pulse. When she spies stuffed animals and squishy doo-dads lined up in someone’s rear window, her pulse quickens and she wants to bean that baby…bad. An animalcontent, she wants to punch the stuffing out of the grown-ups who think it’s cute to obscure their view with lions and tigers and bears, oh Ty. Speaking of which, she's going to go work out her aggression on the only sensible stuffed thing an adult should have: a punching bag.

(photo: makethelist.net)