When I was around 2 years old, I was gifted a Curious George stuffed monkey. He had a baseball cap and shirt that said Curious George on it. I was also gifted several books about Curious George at that same Christmas or birthday family party. That is the first real toy that I remember taking everywhere with me.
At some point after I got him, I was neglected and subsequently “lost” by a babysitter who had a pool at her house. Clearly she wasn’t very intelligent because she called my mother at work and told her I was missing BEFORE she checked her pool, so naturally my mother freaked out about me drowning in her pool. My mother called my father and they both raced to her house to try to find me or I guess to see if I was dead in her pool.
Luckily I had just wandered out of her yard and I was quickly found in the woods behind her house. I was barely three years old from what I understand. And I was wandering in the woods alone. My parents promptly fired her as my daily babysitter and I guess my grandparents kept me for a few weeks while my parents searched for someone better. Eventually a woman from my grandmother’s church recommended another woman who had 6 children that were already teenagers. She was watching a bunch of other children and would eagerly accept me.
I don’t remember my first day there, except for this one hazy memory of Curious George hanging way above my head on her clothesline. Apparently one of the older kids snatched him out of my arms and threw him into the kiddie pool she had in her backyard. What I remember is him hanging up there and me holding my arms up and sobbing for him. His adventures in the pool and on the clothesline resulted in one of his feet having a permanent dent in his foot from where she clipped him to the clothesline.
I still have Curious George somewhere. I’m not sure exactly where he is, but I have actually seen him in the last few months. He may be with the things in storage from the Florida house that I have not yet had time to get through. He wasn’t always my favorite toy and I think I probably stopped carrying him everywhere after his unfortunate swim at my new babysitter’s house. But despite getting rid of most of my toys at some point as I grew up, I never got rid of him. Every time I find him among boxes of weird stuff of mine, I always smile and remember how sad I was when he was stuck up there on the clothesline out of my reach. Even though it may be one of my very first memories ever, I still remember how powerless I felt because I could not reach him to hold him close. I don’t think I understood how wet he really was.
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