I suppose many who were children during and after 1995 went through a phase very similar to mine, however, did not quite take it as far as I did. 1995 of course was the year John Lasseter and the geniuses over at Pixar created Toy Story. Was it a completely made up story created entirely by computer? Yes. Did that stop myself and many other children from believing that our toys came to life as soon as we left the room? Definitely not.
Certainly though, phases such as these come to pass when certain truths (i.e. the non-existence of Santa Clause, the tooth fairy, etc.) are revealed. There is a brief moment of anxiety, a slight loss of innocence, but soon enough, all is right in the world again. Unless of course you’re me and struggled to let go of the idea that inanimate objects have emotion and still to this day need to remind myself that it’s okay, the last cookie will not actually be lonely if I leave it there; putting it in a box with other cookies is to create room in the pantry, not so that the cookie can make new friends.
Am I crazy? Maybe. All I know is that there is a very possible chance my American Girl dolls are currently plotting revenge against me and that a small percent of any weight I’ve gained over the years can be attributed to feeling bad for lonely cookies.
As a child, I had a solid collection of teddy bears, a handful of Barbies, and a few dolls, either American Girl or those strange Cabbage Patch things that smelled like diseased strawberries. I’ll be honest though, I didn’t care much for the Barbies. They always seemed pretty lifeless to me. I mean, you could literally just pop the head right off if you wanted to. But my dolls, they really cared about how I treated them. So for a long time I treated them well. You know, I nurtured them, sung them to sleep, braided their hair, allowed them to stay up past their bedtime when they were good, that sort of thing. However, one day when I was a “tween”, I decided that older girls did not keep their toys on display and therefore, neither should I. So, my bears went into a box and down into the basement and my dolls went onto a shelf in my closet. Big mistake.
I could tell they were pretty angry about this whole growing up thing I was doing, so out of pure fear, I put them in my basement. I figured they were further away from me down there so if one day they decided to go all Chuckie on my ass, I’d have time to react. They have not done anything yet, but if they do, I can’t say I’ll be surprised.
As for the cookies, I’m not really sure what that’s about. I’ve just always had this feeling that things get lonely. Am I the only one who’s apologized to a sock because it’s match got lost in the laundry? How about an hors d’oeuvre served to an odd number of people. That last one just sits there. Nobody wants to be rude and take the last piece, but what about not being rude to the hors d’oeuvre? Don’t let it sit there like it’s that loser in the cafeteria eating lunch all by himself. Be a man and just eat it, dammit. Put that hors d’oeuvre out of its misery.
I digress. Really, this whole thing has gotten much better in recent years. I am fully aware of the lack of emotion inanimate objects have. In fact, just today I cut an apple in half and put the other half back in the refrigerator without feeling the need to apologize. A week ago, I saw that there was just one cookie left. I decided to eat it not because I didn’t want the cookie to be lonely anymore, but because I simply just wanted to eat the cookie. Because cookies are delicious and that’s my prerogative. Because I should be able to eat as many cookies as I want regardless of how that makes the cookies feel, or not feel, or I mean, they don’t feel. I don’t know. I’m still working on it.
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