On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

I live in Los Angeles. The land of broken dreams. The place where it is so easy to become lost. My heart goes out to them and I want to take them home. I am, of course, speaking of the abandoned stuffed animals and toys. It is hard to pass by and not try to rescue them. They call to me and I feel guilt as I walk on by. 

Huggably, snuggaly lost

I don’t feel that guilt when I walk past a pair of discarded sunglasses, but I do when I see a lost toy. Perhaps I have seen the Toy Story trilogy too often, but I have a feeling I would feel this way even if Pixar had never brought it to my attention. 

Yes, I cried. A lot.

A lost-asaurus

As a child, I had a lot of stuffed animals and toys that were animal-shaped and these became my steadfast friends. My brother was 5 years older than me and the kids who lived around us were my brother’s age and male. They’d occasionally allow me to hang out with them, but mostly didn’t want me around and I was left on my own a lot. I was young and short for my grade and, on top of all that, I was quiet and socially awkward. This did not make for a great combination when trying to make friends. The few friends I did have, I only saw at school. My parents didn’t have a lot of friends outside of work, so there were never any children that I became friends with even out of simple, mutual convenience.

Looking back, it seems like it would’ve been a lonely childhood, but I don’t remember feeling very alone. I had my stuffed animals and, to me, they were alive and they were my friends. So when I see these abandoned anthropomorphic toys, my heart feels a twang. They are lying there and they have no friends and they been unceremoniously ostracized from society without any thought or care. And on some level, I see them as my old childhood friends and see my younger self in them.