Imaginary Worlds - Toy Stories

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Many of us have imaginary friends when we’re young in the guise of a doll, stuffed animal or toy that give us a sense of comfort. Then we grow out of those characters – or at least we’re supposed to. We asked our listeners to tell us about their favorite childhood toys that are still around and providing them with a sense of comfort and security during the global health crisis. Featuring Nancy Farnsworth, Steve Romenesko, Jen Cresswell, Jean Klare and the artist Jennifer Maher Coleman who paints portraits of childhood toys.   Jennifer’s site Your Toy Portrait: https://yourtoyportrait.com/category/toyportraits/ Jennifer and her husband’s band Architrave: https://architrave.bandcamp.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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our disbelief. I'm Eric Molenski. When I was a kid, my bedroom was full of toys. Like a lot of kids are into sci-fi and fantasy. Although I was a little bit OCD about displaying them, my dad used to joke that my bedroom looked more like a museum of toys. And there's a picture of me at the age of five lining up my stuffed animals like we're having a staff meeting. I mean, as kids, we all have these imaginary friends that we relied on. And over time, we stop believing in them. And then they just become old toys that our parents can give away without us even noticing.

But for some people, there's that one toy or stuffed animal that survives every round of adolescence and adulthood. And the relationships that we have with these toys might be imaginary, but the sense of comfort and security they give us is still very real. So we asked you to write in to tell us about your favorite toys and stuffed animals that you still have. And we wanted to know, who are they? Why did they become so important to you?

And how are they giving you a sense of comfort during this crisis? All right, so do you have Sirius with you by any chance? He's actually back out there in the bedroom. If I can go grab him real quick. Yeah, why don't you go grab him real quick? Because he's been forced out of retirement by my husband. That is Nancy Farnsworth, and the Sirius that she's referring to is Sirius Black, not the character from the Harry Potter series, but a small, plush, black dog that Nancy named Sirius after she read The Prisoner of Azkaban when she

was a kid. Until that point, she'd been calling the dog Blackie. So I go to my parents, I'm like, his name's Sirius now. And it just stuck. Well, so did you particularly like Sirius? I mean, Sirius is also a protector of Harry. I adored Sirius. I think that's kind of why I linked on to Sirius is, so a little backstory of me is when I was a kid, I had the full haircut that kind of Daniel Radcliffe had in the movies. And I had glasses just like Daniel Radcliffe's. And so I looked like Daniel Radcliffe. Instead of an 11-year-old boy, I was an 8-year-old girl. And I also, I had this lisp, and I'm autistic. So I always kind of felt like an outsider.

And that's really what Sirius ended up becoming for me, is he was one of my truest friends. And that's why I often describe him as he's been my friend the longest. Can you take me through maybe some of those moments when you were a kid or even in teenager where you were feeling upset about something and Sirius was there, you felt to comfort you?

I think the first big memory I remember is when I was 10, my parents' house caught on fire. And my dad had taken my mom out and I was at the breakfast table, but then they both come running in and my dad says, Nancy, get out of the house now. The house is on fire. And I just remember like panicking for a second and then going back to the table and grabbing Sirius, because that's all that was in my mind, was the house is going to catch on fire. I need to grab Sirius. I can't lose him. I just remembered watching. When I was first in the car, I'm watching these giant orange flames shooting out from our chimney and I'm just like so scared and my 13 year old sister

being a 13 year old looked at me and goes we're going to lose our house and you brought the dog and I'm just looked at her and I'm like I can't leave him in there and, that's all I could say the entire time as I'm hugging him close to me. Eventually they were able to put out the fire. We didn't lose a house or anything. And my mom had us go in quickly to get ready for school, just send us off to school like a normal day. And she turned to me and she's all serious. And she's like, just bring him to school today. So he was there when my life literally him to school today so he was there when my life literally caught on fire and he was there when my life figuratively caught on fire because I also I suffer from depression and anxiety and I actually I'm a suicide attempt

survivor and he was basically there in that moment is I just remembered after I almost tried to take my life is I changed my mind last minute. And I remember just going on my bed, grabbing him and sobbing into him for like hours. Like it's the reason why he's still here after 20 years. Yeah. It sounds like he's a witness too, to everything you've been through. Oh yeah. He's a witness. He's also, he's, he's a participant. He's a, he's a heckler. He has, he has a very distinctive voice in my head. And we dubbed it the serious voice. I know that sounds crazy, but that's just kind of how I imagined if he could talk, what he'd be saying to me.

Well, you know, I need you to do the voice right now. I need to hear that voice. So the serious voice, it's up here in a nasally kind of gravelly place. It's always been there. I don't know where it came from. I want to hear a Harry Potter audiobook with Nancy doing that voice for Sirius Black.

Now, of course, she kept Sirius into adulthood, but his presence in her life became the only issue that she and her husband have been arguing about. He was like, why? Why is the dog staying on the shelf all the time? He's serious. He's not the dog. OK, why is serious on the shelf? He's enjoying retirement, Dave. Leave him alone.

It always kind of comes out and always basically I end up winning. I'm alone. It always kind of comes out and always basically I end up winning until recently with the whole quarantine and stuff going on is he cleans is how he deals with stress. And so he, he came out to me. He's like, you know,

we have a five month old now, this stuffed animal really shouldn't be living in our closet. When we have someone who loves stuffed animals. So he comes out to me and plop Sirius down on my son's play mat. And my son looks at Sirius, looks at me, pats Sirius on the back and then kisses his head. And so I basically, I looked, I'm like, okay, if he's going to treat Sirius with respect, unlike you,

I'll let him keep Sirius. Oh, so if he's going to treat Sirius with respect, unlike you, I'll let him keep Sirius. Oh, so now he's in your son's room. Yeah. So now he basically, he lives, my son has a bassinet next to our bed. And so he's the protector of the bassinet. I find comfort from him. And a lot of times when I will break him out for my son is it's usually five in the morning and my son's crying and my husband's trying to go back to sleep. And I'll just, I'll pull out serious and I'll just be like, listen, we got serious here. We both have to calm down and it's, everything's going to be okay. Steve Romanesco also has a stuffed dog from childhood that gives him a sense of comfort.

In this case, it's Patch from 101 Dalmatians, the original animated movie, not the live action remake. Patch was one of the many offspring of the Dalmatians Pongo and Parita. Patch got his name because he has a black spot over his eye. And this stuffed animal version of Patch has helped Steve get through a lot of health issues. When he was 14 years old, Steve had a liver transplant, and then he had another one at the age of 25. And then when he was 30, he had his colon removed. And he says he really started to rely on Patch when he was a kid. And it was clear that he was having really major health problems. And his mother kept bringing him to doctors where they lived in Minnesota. I grew up in a relatively small town and the specialists were in a much bigger town in the state capital.

I can definitely remember in the two-hour trip there and then two-hour trip back to the specialists, which were intimidating experiences that I had Patch sitting with me in the minivan in the back the whole time that I would be holding on to him. And was Patch always with you in the hospital, in the back the whole time that I would that I would be holding on to him. And was Patch always with you in the hospital in the car? Like, did you was it was it was that like a I mean, like surgery, you just sort of leave him in the hospital room or? Yes. Yeah. So Patch never never came into like the OR or anything like that, because that's a pretty, pretty controlled, controlled space. But he would always be in the room waiting for me. Four or five months ago, I had my colon removed. And it's a pretty big operation. I was in the hospital about a week. And, you know, luckily, I was fortunate enough that my partner

was able to stay with me the entire time. You know, she was an amazing support throughout all of it. But Patch was also there too. It was, again, part of when we go to the hospital for big things, we always bring Patch. He's always that support. He's always that comfort. And we were at the point in my hospitalization that we knew I was getting out in the next two or three days. And really the only big hurdle we had left was to remove a surgical drain, which is an experience that I've had before and one that I really don't love and one that can be pretty unpleasant. And it was something I was really anxious about. one that can be, you know, pretty unpleasant. And it was something I was really anxious about. So we had talked and the doctors were in that morning and had said, yeah, we're going to take out that surgical drain, but not today. We'll do that tomorrow. And not five minutes after my

partner leaves, a doctor walks in and says, hey, it's time to remove that surgical drain. And I had a moment of slight panic that was, but we had said we're going to do tomorrow. What, what happened to that? She said, you know, like, we're just going to take it out. You know, it's for the best. And I said, yeah, that sounds good. But a little bit worried that I didn't have, you know, my partner around for support in this time when I really needed some support. And I was able to look over and I saw that we had Patch sitting on the windowsill.

So I was able to grab Patch and clutch onto him and hold him as it happened and got the surgical drain removed. And it's something where I think it really would have been a lot tougher without Patch there and it would have been a lot more difficult. And it was really comforting that he was there for me. Given his health issues, Steve has no plans to go outside for the foreseeable future. He lives with his wife, and they have a great relationship. But Steve says the reason why Patch is important to him is because if he told his loved ones every fear that he was feeling, moment to moment, he worries that he'd be a burden on them. sometimes especially when I was going through a lot of my medical things where my emotions were changing by the second that you know when I express one emotion by the time it leaves my mouth I'm feeling differently I can communicate that as quickly as I need to with patch whereas

it would be a more laborious process to talk it out with another human being to say like this is why I'm feeling what I'm feeling here are all the pieces surrounding that this is what also is affecting it this is what also going on like it it very quickly becomes a very multi-faceted thing that you need to explain to an almost like irreconcilable degree so but patch just gets it instantaneously he gets these things but if i were to bring pongo then oh pongo doesn't even understand he's never even been to any appointments of course i'm bringing patch oh you've pongo too uh yeah actually i do i think i've got him in the closet wait so okay that's so interesting see i was thinking you fall in love with patch because he's a cute character and then that's your 100

dalmatian why why you know why wasn't Pongo with you during all that time? I don't know. I think part of it in thinking about it is that Patch in regard, when you look at 101 Dalmatians, Patch is the one that's pretty different when you see him. You know, like if you were to scan across the whole crowd, he's the one with the patch on his eye and you see him as the different one. And growing growing up that was often me whether that be you know like being a a nerdy kid and then you know like dealing with that when I was in school and then moving on to you know in middle school after I move on from elementary school you see that I'm suddenly the kid who's the different one because I'm the one with all the health problems and And Patch was always the one that was also different

because of the patch on his eye. And for whatever reason, I identified with that. I think that's part of the bond that brought it together. After the break, we will cross the Atlantic to meet some new toys. Or as they say in Britain, we're going to go across the pond. Jen Cresswell is English and lives in Scotland. Given my knowledge of the area, which is based on watching things like Outlander, I assumed that she probably would get a lot of flack for being English there.

But she says no. This is one of the things I love most about Scotland. The definition of Scottish nationality is, do you live in Scotland? Do you feel Scottish? Can you put up with the food and weather? Her answer to all three is a resounding yes. In fact, she's really frustrated that she can't go out and do her job now, which is being a tour guide in Edinburgh.

When we talked, I could see that her room was full of pop culture memorabilia. There's a big picture of Indiana Jones right behind her. But her favorite childhood toy is a generic stuffed horse named Joe. And it wasn't even her horse to begin with. When she was little, the horse was in her brother's room. I decided, therefore, that the toy horses were going to be mine because I like horses. My brother wasn't first with horses. He was into Star Wars. And so he had Joe in his room. I was like, he doesn't really care much about that toy.

He wasn't called Joe then. My brother called him Nene. Horses make a Nene noise. He was Nene. So like, yeah, he doesn't care about that. I'm going to take it. Mine out. Yank. She was right. Her brother didn't care. And she decided the name he gave the horse, Nene, had to go. Ridiculous name. So I was trying to think of a new name. And for some reason, I thought Smokey Joe was a good name for a horse. It kind of sounded American, you know, cowboys, horses. And they just kind of like, I just ended up calling him Joe and just got shortened

to Joe. I remember this really well. I came to the kitchen and I was like, mum, I've got a new name for the pony, for Nene. Mum goes, oh, you know, she's actually washing up. She's like, oh yeah, what are you going to call him? And I said, I'm going to call him Joe. And she literally froze, turned and looked at me. I was like, why did you pick that name? And then she told me the story about how we got Joe. The story went back before she was born, before her brother was born, back to when their father served in the Royal Air Force during the Cold War. They had to do really dangerous flying, really scary stuff. You know, this is full top gun, below radar. My dad shrunk an inch due to the G-force.

Wow, really? Yes, he shrunk an inch. Really intense stuff. But it was a case of if it was going to get to a wall, they had to know how to do it. So they had to do it all in the training. In the early 1980s, her father was sent to the U.S. for training, and he had become good friends with another pilot in their squad

named Joe. And one of the big things they did was Red Flag in Nevada, which was below radar training in all the canyons and deserts there. It was very early on, so I think they go out for about a week that Joe crashed. They don't know what happened. My dad knew him as well as you can know someone after a few months, but it's a really weird way to form a friendship because

in a way you have to get close. You're trusting your lives to these people. How did the horse come into this? They wouldn't allow the squadron to go back for the funeral. So Joe's remains were flown back to the UK, but they wouldn't let the squadron go back. They had to do the rest of the training.

And this is where the military wives come in. The military wives really are kind of like an unsung part of the force. So because the men couldn't come back, the women went to represent their husbands. They went to support Joe's widow. And my mum at the time was heavily pregnant with my brother. It was not an easy pregnancy. And she nearly lost my brother.

She was hospitalised because the stress they thought she would actually she nearly lost my brother. She was hospitalized because the stress they thought she would actually miscarry my brother. And so she was put in the hospital, but she felt it was her duty to go to the funeral to be there for a friend, to represent dad as well. After the funeral, Jo's widow came to see Jen's mother, and she gave her the stuffed horse as a present for Jen's brother. When her mother told her the story of Joe, Jen thought it was spooky that she decided to name the horse Joe, but it also felt strangely reassuring. Plus, she really loved that horse.

The way I can describe it is Joe fitted. So when you hug him, just like the way his body is shaped it just fits into my arms I still can't go to sleep and this is like confessions here I still can't go to sleep at night unless I hug something when things scary things happen when sad things happen it's natural for me to kind of like go to bed snuggling my blankets and hug joe there's a kind of comfort there i think because it's that stability you know if there's a big change or something happens he's the same obviously more threadbare and gradually losing hair and stuff but he's still here and it's a an anchor in some. It's funny, I'm saying that and I'm playing him closer to me.

I know, I noticed that. Yeah, it's so bizarre that I can't put into words some of the things about Joe. Like, why do I feel this? I honestly don't know. When you think about it from an adult perspective, it can be baffling why you feel attached to these certain inanimate objects, why they still feel alive to you.

Although in many situations, the toy or the stuffed animal is pretty cute. It's got big eyes or a sweet little face, or you first saw it in a movie or a TV show and you can connect it to that storyline. But we got an email from a listener whose most treasured childhood toy is a pair of red plastic bricks. Jean Clary lives in the Netherlands. And when he was seven years old, his family went on vacation to Northern Italy.

After a week, he became very sick. He had trouble breathing. His parents rushed him to the closest hospital, which was a very old hospital run by nuns. It was really intense. They jabbed a syringe in my butt every day, which really hurt. And they made x-rays from my chest and, yeah, that kind of stuff. He did not speak Italian. They did not speak Dutch. x-rays from my chest and yeah, that kind of stuff. He did not speak Italian. They did not speak Dutch.

He mostly communicated to them through hand gestures. His parents came to see him as much as they could, but the other boys in the hospital ward, who were local to the area, were getting visited all the time by their extended families. They got these huge presents from their families, like electric train sets and these really nice big model cars and also Lego sets. And the boy next to me, in the bed next to me, he had his whole bed covered in Italian counterfeit Lego bricks.

And that was my favorite toy. I played with Legos all day, every day at home. And I was really frustrated that he did not want to let me touch them. It's funny because I think I remember, I'm about the same age as you, and I do remember there being a lot more counterfeit Legos out there that other companies would make. And I think Lego there being a lot more counterfeit Legos out there that other companies would make. And I think Lego eventually started suing them all. That's why they all disappeared. Did you recognize that immediately? You're like, these are Legos, but not Legos.

I think I would have noticed immediately when I picked them up. They were off color, a little bit lighter, not as precisely molded. So do you remember asking him if you could play with his Legos? Yeah. Well, I would have, I suppose, gestured to him for permission. So yeah, he might have misinterpreted my request. Yeah. He just would not let me near them. After a while, at the end of the afternoon, I guess, they made him put them away.

They made all the kids put all their toys away, I guess, for a meal or something. And I noticed that he had dropped some off under his bed. And that's when I just slipped out of my bed and crawled under it and grabbed them. So once you had them, you only had a few Legos. Were you able to secretly play with them? Yeah, it's like a nice twiddly thing you can do when you just want your hands to do something. Just stack them and break them apart and stack them again. It's like a nice little activity.

So how long were you there? Probably a week, seven or eight days. So you got back and you have these Lego pieces, these Italian counterfeit Lego pieces that are off color. Why did you not just throw them away? Well, it was a bounty, right? Yeah, I just don't really like to throw stuff away that has a memory attached to it. But were you able to snap them together with your real Legos? Them being counterfeit, they didn't exactly fit right.

And they stood out being off-color, but they worked. And when my son was old enough to transition from toddler-size Lego bricks to proper bricks. I gave him all of mine. Then I told him the story about how they ended up in the collection and why they are different. When you wrote us, you said something that I thought was very poetic, that you actually, after a while, kind of identified with those Legos, that you felt like the fact that you yourself didn't quite fit in? Yeah, I was reminded of my time in the Italian hospital recently

when the pandemic hit in Italy. And I thought about my experiences in the Italian hospital. And so that's why I had been thinking about this some more. Yeah, I was there. I was like this sick foreign kid who didn't speak a language. I didn't fit in, just like the two red bricks that don't really fit into my pile of, well, my son's pile of Legos now. So the Legos now, they're just mixed in with your son's Legos? Yeah. He's 20, so're just mixed in with your son's Legos. Yeah, he's 20.

So he doesn't play with them. Oh, so that's interesting. Yeah, I guess I thought he was still young enough to keep playing with Legos. So are they also just sitting in a box or a bag right now? Where are they? Yeah, they're in boxes. His room has a little attic and that's where

they sit and they wait for, yeah, maybe when he's kids and then they will play with them. I hope I'll get to tell the story again. Now, one of our listeners wrote us with a suggestion that we should look at the painter Jennifer Mayer Coleman. She makes portraits of childhood toys. Her paintings of people's Playmobil figures or old Transformers or baby dolls are created with acrylics on canvas. When I had taken on this business and this idea of painting toys, it had seemed very lighthearted to me and very like a sort of a cheerful theme and a cheerful subject matter to

be painting. But in a lot of cases, there was a strange dark edge and a sense that the toys were standing in for affection, were, you know, sort of support for grief or loss. And there was some real interesting sort of twisted psychology behind what I was told about the toys. sort of twisted psychology behind what I was told about the toys. I was curious to hear Jennifer's perspective because she's seen so many different varieties of childhood toys. And most of her commissions are from parents who want her to paint their child's favorite toys before the kids grow out of them. And many times, she says the parents are still struggling to understand why their kids fell in love with these toys. My favorite thing is when a family will give a toy to a baby in hopes that they'll love it.

And it'll be like a real classy toy, like a knit toy or an expensive toy or the popular toy that parents are giving to their kids. And the child just isn't having it and falls in love with something that is just trashy and awful. Like one of my first commissions was for this weird, larger than life plastic My Little Pony that had sort of flirtatious, seductive eyes and was in a weird pose. And the mother who was commissioning it said, I hate this thing. It is so disturbing to me, but I want to have a portrait for my child of their toy. And this is the toy they love. They don't love any of the cool toys I bought them. The heart wants what the heart wants. You know, I'm so amused when they still come to me and have a portrait done of that because they're just,

they just admit it. They just can't, you know, they can't win this war. just they just admit it they just can't you know they can't win this war that's wild have you had any particularly bizarre or strange requests over the years that like well this one stands out because nobody ever asked for this again i mean there have just been lots of interesting toys that you just can't believe somebody loves like one of my first commissions was this absolutely horrible vintage monkey faced thing it was like a disgusting pl was this absolutely horrible vintage monkey face thing. It was like a disgusting plush toy with a plastic monkey face that was completely worn out. And like it looked terrifying, absolutely terrifying. And it was this person's husband's absolutely favorite thing in the whole world and just beloved.

And she had to have a portrait of it for him. And its name was Choppable. I mean, come on. So now I'm curious, what percentage of your clients would you say are people who are doing these paintings for their adult partners? Oh, large amount, I think. Maybe because they're the new partner. There might be some connection between how much love your spouse has for this other object and he also loves you. Yeah, we could share the love. Yeah, it's been fascinating.

There was another cute thing where there was a couple who someone was making a portrait of their two favorite toys from their childhoods as a gift for their baby's nursery. The baby was going to be born soon and they wanted to paint the couple's favorite toys together. And what they were was two gunned bears. I don't know if you remember from when you were a kid, everybody had these gunned bears. They were the same color. They each had the same color bear. And apparently when they were little, both of them had carried the bears around by the nose in their mouths. So they would walk around with the bear's nose in their mouth and just carry the bear that way. And then met and got married. I mean, to me, things like that are just bananas. I mean, that's a match made in heaven

or something. I mean, these toys and stuffed animals are expressions of love. I mean, why you fall in love with something or someone is hard to define, although you know it when you feel it. And I don't think it's a coincidence that so many of these stories tie back to moments when we felt vulnerable, when the adults couldn't give us what we needed because we were so young, we didn't have the language to communicate our needs. So we imagine something that can understand us. And I actually feel a sense of comfort in knowing that human beings are hardwired to create loving relationships anywhere, anyhow. That is what helps us survive.

One more thing before I go. When I was interviewing people, I was thinking, this is all very interesting, but it doesn't apply to me. And then I remembered an old childhood friend, a red and white polka dotted stuffed mouse that is still at my parents' house. Bring Mousy in here. Do you want to see Mousy? Ah, there he is.

I want you to know that the minute you were born, right afterwards, I went to the gift shop at the hospital, and I wanted to find something, and I saw Mousy, and I knew right away that he was going to be yours. I just knew it. Of course, when I was little, I had all these stuffed animals and everything. Did you think it was unusual that I held on to Mousy all these years? No.

Well, he's very special. Well, no, you held on to Darth Vader and the Millennium Falcon and we have the Smurfs in your cabinet. But I would say he was your first comfort toy. I mean, it's funny. I didn't bring him to college. I didn't bring him to LA.

I didn't bring him to New York. In fact, I totally forgot he was your first comfort toy. I mean, it's funny. I didn't bring him to college. I didn't bring him to LA. I didn't bring him to New York. In fact, I totally forgot he was even there until I started working on this. And I suddenly realized, oh my God, I have a stuffed animal. It's just like, it just makes me more comfortable to know it's at your place, not mine. That means we can never move.

Can you imagine that? They come with us. Moving to a senior living. Oh, right. You can't, you wouldn't take Mousy with you to senior living. Certainly could,. You can't. You wouldn't take Mousy with you to senior living. Certainly could, but we might not have the room. Well, they might think that we belong in a senior place if we had to bring our little Mousy. In that case, I would take Mousy

with me. In the meantime, I know he's well taken care of. I'm not going to put him back until I sew him up and take care of all his little bruises. He was fixed up here, I see. But he needs to have a little work on his arm. The back needs to be... Actually, his shoulder is similar to mine. I have a torn rotator cuff, and I think Muzzy has the same one. Yeah, but I can fix him. I have heavy, heavy thread.

That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. And thank you to everybody who wrote in. Special thanks to Nancy Farnsworth, Steve Romanesco, Jen Cresswell, Jean Claret, Jennifer Mayer Coleman, and my parents. I have a slideshow of the toys and stuffed animals we discussed on the Imaginary World's Instagram page. There is also a slideshow of Jennifer's toy portraits. By the way, she and her husband have a band

and this song, called Outside, is dedicated to their daughter who likes to imagine that her life is a big reality show and her home is a dollhouse that we're all watching. I put links to Jennifer's music and artwork in the show notes. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweet at emalinski and Imagine Worlds pod. If you like Imaginary Worlds, please leave a review wherever you get your podcasts or let people know you like it on social media. But the best way to support Imaginary Worlds is to donate on Patreon. At different levels, you can get either free Imaginary Worlds sticker, a mug, t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, which has the full interviews of every guest in every episode. You can learn more at imaginaryworldspodcast.org.