Thursday, September 08, 2011

Eeyore and Me

When I was a small girl (and even not so small), I was very fond of a stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh. We were pretty inseparable. I even carried Pooh over my shoulder everywhere I went at Trout Lake Camp in northern Minnesota for a couple of summer camps.


Pooh is just impossible not to love.


On the other hand, Eeyore is a tough one to love. He is always in a bad mood. His favorite expression is "Oh, bother!"


Recently, I was given a stuffed Eeyore, and the two of us have become inseparable. Perhaps I have reverted to my childhood. Perhaps I have begun to identify with poor Eeyore more. There's a great story about him in The World of Pooh which reflects my recent muddled thinking and my confusing answers to the question, "How are you?"


"The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about. So when Winnie-the-Pooh came stumping along, Eeyore was very glad to be able to stop thinking for a little, in order to say, "How do you do" in a gloomy manner to him.


"And how are you? said Winnie-the-Pooh.


Eeyore shook his head from side to side.


"Not very how," he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a long time."


Well, neither have I, Susan, felt very "how for a long time," but at least I've got a good friend to stick by my side.


I have to share with you a generous paraphrase of the Bible that I received this week while I was in the midst of "enema struggles."


Psalm 110:1 “The doctor said to my doctor, sit right there on the pot until I make your enemas your footstool.”


Sorry, no deeper thoughts than that today. I'm in need of another nap. "Oh, bother!"

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