{"id":3327,"date":"2026-09-05T18:47:51","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T18:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=3327"},"modified":"2026-09-05T23:26:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T23:26:41","slug":"the-altered-states-of-stuffed-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2026\/09\/05\/the-altered-states-of-stuffed-animals\/","title":{"rendered":"The Altered States of Stuffed Animals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[Note: This personal essay was originally published in the Superstition Review<\/em>, Spring 2016 issue. It was a terrific online lit magazine published by Arizona State University. Unfortunately the Superstition Review<\/em> is no longer with us, so I’m reclaiming the essay, a decade later, and giving it a new life here, by popular request.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My daughter cohabits with approximately 427 stuffed animals. If this were like the early days of The Book of Genesis and the skies were to open and deluge us with forty days and forty nights of rain, we could repopulate the Earth with our own Noah\u2019s ark of stuffies. Only they wouldn\u2019t be alive, technically<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s actually a moot point. For my daughter, these animals are alive. She has an elaborate Invisible World that is populated with stuffed and make-believe beings, friends, and furniture. In this Invisible World, the animals rule. If a Great Flood were to come, she\u2019d be ready, with her entire troupe. I can imagine her drawing up the plans for her animal boat, although she\u2019d want to know exactly what a \u201ccubit\u201d is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would be called Lili\u2019s Ark, in honor of its namesake. Names are important. My daughter knows this. She has named each and every one of her stuffies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our most recent adoptions include a kangaroo mother with her joey\u2014Rosa Parks and Little Baby Washington. These were rescued from a gift shop at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C. We also adopted a Giant Squid (James Earl Faster) and a Honey Badger (Hamilton), who was my choice. One of her dragons (we have several) is Jo-Jo SillyBilly, who makes a strange gargling growl if you squeeze his paw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I confess my favorite of all is a rather large penguin named Aquatica Mortimer. He’s the handsome fellow in the center of the photo below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aquatica Mortimer and Friends<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He was adopted into the family at a SeaWorld amusement park in San Antonio, Texas. On the day we visited, as far as I could tell SeaWorld was merely a rather elaborate, land-locked, water-themed, gigantic gift shop. The killer whales\u2014one of the main draws, like lions at a safari park\u2014were on break. We couldn\u2019t see them, but I imagined them in a back room, smoking cigarettes and doing tequila shots. Talking about which trainers they\u2019d like to hold under the water just a little too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lili loved it. Her idea of vacation is an endless stream of gift shops. As long as they are well stocked with stuffed animals. We have visited Yellowstone National Park many times in her eight years of existence (the first time before she was two). She has backpacked there several times, including more than once hiking six miles on her rather short, little-girl legs, doing a good job of keeping up with the grown-ups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of her most memorable moments: While we were making dinner around the campfire in the Imperial Geyser Basin, not far from the famous Firehole River, a large Buffalo (or American Bison, okay?) walked right through our camp. It was almost close enough to touch. We didn\u2019t know what to do. We didn\u2019t even see it coming until it was there, upon us. We looked into its eyes and froze. It kept walking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After it was fifty paces from our camp, it lay on its back and squirmed, scratching its back, like dogs do. Lili was thrilled, and still talks about it to this day. She keeps trying to tell the story the right way, again and again, in various journal entries. Most of them involve some form of the sentence: \u201cA buffalo walked through our camp!\u201d She calls an exclamation point a \u201cgusto mark,\u201d and uses them liberally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our bison friend<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All these gifts shops and stuffed-animal buying come with an emotional cost. Once, in Glacier National Park, at the Two Medicine Lodge (we loved the name) gift shop, Lili clamored for a little stuffed-animal Lynx, which I didn\u2019t want to buy for her. We\u2019d already bought her a number of stuffies on that trip and at the moment I thought it was one too many. She pouted and sulked. It wasn\u2019t expensive\u2014five or eight dollars, I believe\u2014and I gave in. Then I became angry with her for not saying, \u201cThank you.\u201d On the return to our camp, I pouted and sulked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still feel bad about that. Yes, I should not spoil her, in principle. I don\u2019t want her to become another Veruca Salt, that pretty brat from Roald Dahl\u2019s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/em>\u2014who is, by the way, one of Lili\u2019s favorite characters. But she\u2019s not. She can pout and sulk and get over it within minutes. I can too. But I realize I shouldn\u2019t let anger get the best of me, shouldn\u2019t pout or sulk like an eight-year-old. It\u2019s my role to be mature<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I\u2019m angry I feel like William Hurt in Altered States<\/em> (1980)\u2014that Eighties cult film, an adaptation of a Paddy Chayefsky novel (1978). In Altered States<\/em> Hurt starts as an anthropology professor who messes around with sensory-deprivation tanks and does hallucinogenic drugs (a kind of handsome Carlos Castaneda, as it were), so much that he undergoes a kind of reverse evolution. Eventually he becomes an apelike creature, a Homo erectus<\/em> perhaps, terrorizing the zoo and one comely graduate assistant in his bed (well, he doesn\u2019t actually terrorize<\/em> her). He just grunts. That\u2019s what I feel like when I lose my cool, with its commiserate guilt\/remorse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The animals help when I reach this stage of devolution. I confess that I sometimes buy forgiveness with the purchase of stuffed animals. I know this is wrong. But still, I think, it\u2019s not that<\/em> wrong. If it\u2019s a sin, it\u2019s pretty minor. A venal one at best. I feel remorse for letting anger get the best of me, but seriously<\/em> (as Lili is wont to say), remorse for buying her another stuffed animal? Not much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been a constant chore, teaching her to be polite, good manners and all. To say her please<\/em> and thank yous<\/em>. Friends and even strangers will remark to us how polite she is, and my wife and I are like, \u201cYou don\u2019t know the half of it.\u201d Discipline for us has been an on-going task, fraught with turmoil and guilt and general success. I wish I could say I\u2019ve never raised my voice. I wish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t spank her, thank god. I can\u2019t even imagine the guilt that would haunt me if I did. Once I asked married-with-children friends of ours if they ever spanked their children and the mother replied, rather haughtily, \u201cWe never hit<\/em>our children.\u201d Touch\u00e9! And persuasive: Who wants to be the parent who proclaims, \u201cWhen my child doesn\u2019t do what I ask, I hit her!\u201d So we don\u2019t. Instead we reprimand<\/em>. We nag. We repeat ourselves. A lot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lili is an only child. I don\u2019t really like that term, but it\u2019s accurate, I guess. There\u2019s an implication of being spoiled (probably, in a way), but also of somehow pampered, unrealistic. What is realistic? There are lots of \u201conly children\u201d in the world now. Many if not most of Lili\u2019s friends are also \u201conly children.\u201d Back in the day (say, Kansas during the Dust Bowl years, living in a sod house, covering the faces of the fifteen children with gauze masks to keep out the dust) this was a rarity, when maybe tuberculosis was a common cause of death. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But seeing as she doesn\u2019t have other siblings to spend time with, she\u2019s gravitated to the Animal World. She crawls around the floor daily, impersonating one animal after another. Yesterday she was a wolf pup. \u201cThey\u2019re so cute!\u201d she exclaimed. Variously she has assumed the personalities of honey badgers, duck-billed platypuses, and black-footed ferrets. She believes it is wrong to hunt or to kill animals in any way. (We are, after all, animals ourselves<\/em>, as she likes to point out.) Perhaps she does take this to an extreme degree: She hides flyswatters, won\u2019t even let me use ant powder. Given her druthers, she prefers animals alive, up close and personal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she pointed out during our recent trip, the Smithsonian\u2019s Museum of Natural History is really a dead zoo. The Louvre of Lost Animals. That\u2019s where we adopted Rosa Parks and Little Baby Washington, two fine members of our 672 stuffed animals (we\u2019ve purchased some new ones since I started this paragraph).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, most of our stuffed animal encounters do not involve reprimanding, feeling guilty, or forgiveness. Mostly they involved cuddling. And sometimes minor heroics. Quests, no less. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the time we drove ninety miles to rescue the lost Billy NannyGoat. We were on a road trip, where many of our mishaps occur\u2014passing through Colorado Springs, en route to Wyoming. After visiting an AutoZone, we had a picnic lunch on the grassy knoll beside a busy avenue, under some trees. Is this crazy or what? A picnic lunch beside a busy avenue? Well, the timing was right: We\u2019d already been driving over an hour to get there, and the avenue wasn\u2019t that busy. The sky was blue, the air fresh. We enjoyed ourselves. Lili sat against a tree and at the outset of the picnic, Billy NannyGoat was in her lap. Life was sublime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An hour later, approaching the outskirts of Denver, Lili burst into tears. What\u2019s wrong? Billy NannyGoat! He\u2019s gone. \u201cI left him on the ground. He\u2019s all alone! He doesn\u2019t know anyone there!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m driving: Interstate 25\/speed limit 75. I\u2019m doing 80 no doubt. It\u2019s the Law West of Wherever: Always add five miles an hour to whatever the speed limit, and you\u2019re cool. Lili is weeping inconsolably in the backseat, beside her aunt (my sister), who had given her the stuffy\u2014that day. A brand-new stuffy, left on the roadside, for any thug to come along and steal. An exit appeared. At that speed, I have microseconds to react. \u201cAre you sure he\u2019s there?\u201d I asked. Lili nodded. \u201cI put him behind my back, to keep him warm. Right against the tree.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note the particularity\u2014the specificity<\/em>, if you will\u2014of her memory. I try to teach my writing students this mantra: Be specific<\/em>. Lili\u2019s specific memory was convincing. I flicked the turn signal. \u201cYou\u2019re not doing what I think you\u2019re doing,\u201d said my wife. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The atmosphere in the car was tense. Each of us locked in our own imaginary scenarios. What if we drove all the way back and no Billy NannyGoat? What if someone had stolen him? True, he was a handsome little goat. But kidnappers? Really? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe she had not left him there at all. Maybe we would make it back to the AutoZone and no Billy NannyGoat. His disappearance would become a Mystery. Like Sasquatch or a Chupacabra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody said a word. Lili quit crying, but she didn\u2019t smile. She sniffled a little, looked worried. \u201cHe\u2019s all alone,\u201d she whispered, more than once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he was. All alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time we neared the AutoZone (rhymes with all alone<\/em>), I was steeling myself to move on, counsel Lili about what we lose in life, how it wasn\u2019t her fault, and so on. It was an hour out of the way on a day of driving that was already close to five hundred miles distance even without this stuffed-animal-rescue detour, but oh well. Traffic was brisk. The AutoZone parking lot was mostly empty. And there, beneath the tree, in clear view out our windows, sat a small stuffed animal, Billy NannyGoat, waiting patiently for the family who had driven off without him. Lili smiled. \u201cThere he is. Just like I said.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Billy NannyGoat, waiting patiently on the Avenue of Lost Stuffies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That was the first day of a two-week vacation to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks\u2014a trip in which almost everything seemed to go well. I like to think we were blessed by Billy\u2019s rescue. That if we had not returned, we would have been cursed. Logically, perhaps, there\u2019s no connection. But what is logic to do about a little girl with fat tears in the backseat, weeping for the goat she left behind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My daughter cohabits with approximately 427 stuffed animals. If this were like the early days of The Book of Genesis and the skies were to open and deluge us with forty days and forty nights of rain, we could repopulate the Earth with our own Noah\u2019s ark. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[531,529,532,530],"tags":[94,533,178,201],"class_list":["post-3327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memoir","category-parenting","category-personal-essay","category-stuffed-animals","tag-glacier-national-park","tag-stuffed-animal-essay","tag-the-west","tag-yellowstone-national-park"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t