Stuffing Tony

Stuffing Tony

Stuffing Tony©

By Michael Casey

Stuffing Tony, what am I talking about, no not our tame turkey whom we’ve decided to eat, nor anything else. Tony is in fact a soft toy, he’s my small daughter’s favorite, the one she loves the most. He’s a white tiger, he was in fact he was her sister’s Birthday tiger from a few years ago, but she cried until she owned him. Tony is a very washed out bleached kind of tiger. Tony has been through the washing machine a couple of times, he was very very dizzy when he came out. Yesterday Tony got a brother, his brother is a ginger tiger, now christened Ginger. Ginger makes us laugher because Ginger is how English people call my wife if they cannot pronounce  her Chinese name.

Tony is one of 40 stuffed toys the girls have, they live up a corner behind the sofa which is just behind me. They are allowed out to form a class when my small daughter plays teacher, afterwards they climb back into their Iceland bags and go to sleep. There is a problem with Tony though, he’s lived in the fast lane and lost a lot of weight. So following strict instructions, today I have done a stuffing transplant, which is like a heart transplant but much more important and dangerous. Today without any sedative I have made Loony Chick donate some stuffing to Tony. I took the scissors and make an incision   in Loony Chick’s behind, I then proceeded to remove the stuffing. I had previously made an incision in Tony’s neck at the back, it was then  a process of removing from Loony Chick and stuffing Tony.

The whole procedure lasted 20mins, Tony now looks very plumped up and proud, as the leader of the pride should look. As for Loony Chick, he, she or should I say it now looks as if he’d had a few dodgy kebabs, very slim, but at least the head still looks plump. When the girls come home from school we’ll decide what to do with Loony Chick, should we stuff him with chopped up old clothes, or bubble wrap? Or should he face the death sentence and be sent to a Charity shop, I  know it sounds cruel, but since he came back from Shanghai in 2009 he’d mainly been a cushion.

These are the very serious things a modern parent has to deal with, luckily I know how to sew, and I have a special relationship with all the toys. Now that Tony is full and looks like a weightlifting Tiger I hope Ginger won’t be jealous, otherwise one of them may have to end up in a zoo, or the closest equivalent, in one of the 13 charity  shops near our house.

www.michaelgcasey.wordpress.com   www.michaelgcasey.typepad.com

this story comes from my book 300 and Not OUT