This
is Ernie in the middle.
I
purchased him when I had worked for Snelgroves ice cream store in Salt Lake
City. He has a music box inside of
him. When wound up, he will play the
tune "Teddy Bear's Picnic". I
brought Ernie into my marriage. I think
he sat on a shelf until after Jenna was born.
I would play the song for her.
She loved putting her hand on Ernie's belly when the music played. She loved feeling the music play.
This
is how Hi-Five may have appeared at one time.
strange
name, I know. I will explain how we got
his name, but first allow me to back up to the day when Hi-Five joined our
family. Jenna and I had been visiting
with Aunt Gertrude who often purchased items just because they were on
sale. It was rare that any family member
would ever visit and not be offered to
walk away with some material object be it a sweatshirt, stuffed animal, collectible doll or rocks (see this post)
We
had Ernie with us, and Aunt Trudy went and got Hi-Five because she thought they
both had cute faces and Ernie's face had reminded her of Hi-Five - although we
hadn't picked out a name for him until much later.
Aunt
Trudy wanted Jenna to have the dog. He
had a lot more fluff at that time. Often
it was hard to see his eyes because of the fluff. At first, Jenna didn't want anything to do
with it.
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| This is what Jenna was wearing the day she received Hi-Five |
It
was several months before she warmed up to him and then couldn't bear to live
without him. Hi-Five went EVERWHERE that
she went.
Hi-Five
wasn't given his name until after Jenna had learned to walk. She has always been smart and would retrieve
things from her bedroom if we mentioned them - or else she would lead me to
what she couldn't retrieve (like the growth chart on her door)
I
had taught her how to give a high five sign
and
one day I said to her, "Give me a
high five!"
She
disappeared without attempting to slap my hand. When she returned, she was
carrying her beloved dog that Aunt Gertrude had given her. She gave it to me.
"Oh,
is 'High Five" the name of your dog?"
She
said a few words at the time, but was really not much of a talker then. But with a few more questions, I
decided that she was in favor of calling the dog Hi-Five. I am the one who chose the spelling.
Jenna
loved that thing ragged. I made sure it
stayed clean, but it didn't always look it.
Aunt Trudy tried replacing him with another stuffed dog whom Jenna's
oldest sister, Francine, had named
Graham Crackers because of his color. Jenna
called him "Crackers". She
dragged both Hi-Five and Crackers with her for a while, but did not ever love
Crackers (or any other stuffed animal) as much as she loved Hi-Five.
 |
| Crackers came with a kerchief around his neck |
I
would allow her to take it into most stores that we would go to - except for
second hand stores though many might have rejected him if he had ever been
mistakenly donated. I tried to cover up
his mishaps with clothes.
I
even gave him a haircut and told Jenna that his fur would not be growing back.
You
know how some mothers have to wean their children from favorite blankets? I was
determined not to have that problem and had given Jenna a different blanket
every day - sometimes several times during the day. It never dawned on me that a stuffed animal
would become her "security blanket"
and I don't know why. He was
never soft in my opinion. Over the years
he felt more coarse. I would have
thought he would feel scratchy to Jenna, but she really did love it very
much. Maybe even more than balls or
rocks. We had reached a point where she
just couldn't sleep without him.
When
we moved from Kearns to West Valley, Hi-Five ended up living in the shed. I told Jenna he could not live in her room
unless she took care of it. He moved
with us to Oregon. Currently he resided
in Jenna's room. Throughout the years, he has gotten more shabby. He's been restuffed twice. Roland had even purchased a heart to go
inside along with the stuffing the last time.
As I told Jenna, his hair did not grow back.
 |
| Hi-Five today January 2019 |
