Near the Wyoming\/Colorado state border yesterday, I saw a little stuffed monkey hanging on a reflector post along I-25. You know the kind of monkey – the ones with the wrap-around arms. So cute – it gave me a chuckle. I wish we could have stopped to take a picture, but it was in the middle of construction where traffic was down to one lane each way. Maybe someone put it there to help with potential road rage since one-lane construction traffic on an interstate is really annoying, especially when you are in a hurry.<\/p>\n
While I was laughing though, I also felt a twinge of weird sorrow for the poor little monkey. All by himself in the middle of nowhere, out in the weather. When I was growing up, I always felt like my stuffed animals were alive and had feelings. I never much played with dolls but I had tons of stuffed animals that I loved. I always tried not to show favoritism to the animals, cause I felt like it would hurt the others’ feelings. Silly, I know. But what is even sillier is those thoughts still kinda run through my mind today. As recent as last year, I was at my parents’ house and was picking out some of my old stuffed animals to bring home with me. I felt really guilty and bad for the ones that I didn’t pick, as if I was hurting their feelings by leaving them behind. It was really hard putting the ones I did not choose back into their storage bins. And I feel a sense of sadness whenever I see a stuffed animal in a thrift store or at a garage sale. They always look so dejected. I don’t think I could ever give mine away like that. It would feel as if I was giving away a family member. Well, probably not that <\/em>bad, but I still don’t think I could do it.<\/p>\n Okay, you can stop making fun of me now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Near the Wyoming\/Colorado state border yesterday, I saw a little stuffed monkey hanging on a reflector post along I-25. You know the kind of monkey – the ones with the wrap-around arms. So cute – it gave me a chuckle. I wish we could have stopped to take a picture, but it was in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noreimerreason.com\/amberandgreg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}