Saturday, July 01, 2006

Dreams and Teddy Bears

Scince I'm listed as a contributor on this blog I thought I should pull my own weight.
I shall blog about dreams because I dream, and remember them, almost every night.
I have had prophetic dreams, I've interceeded for people in my dreams, I've done warfare in them and of course I've had many rediculous dreams too.
Last night, I had several very long dreams and I will share a portion of one of them because I found it interesting. Let me know what you think if you want to.
I dreamed that there was a woman that ran a day care and she was getting all of her kids off the van from some sort of trip. There were more than twenty children and the only helper she had was her twelve year old daughter. They were getting all the kids into two groups on a rope and the last child was in a plastic toy car tied to the end of the rope, He was being pushed by the daughter. The daughter decided to give the car a good hard push to get it to go fast and the car started to go sideways like when you play crack the whip. The boy in the car ran into a piece of playground equipment and started crying. I ran over to him and noticed he had a scratch on his head. Someone came over and I pointed it out to them. They were going to take the boy inside but before they did I went to hand him his teddy bear. I noticed that the teddy bear had a scratch on his head too and then I noticed that the bump on the bear started to swell. I told the boy to take the bear with him because he needed help too. It was as if the bear was alive.
It was weird even in the dream.

By the way, We call Teddy Bears "TEDDY bears" because:

Why is a bear usually one of a child's first stuffed toys? And why are toy bears called "Teddy?" Look no further than our nation's twenty-sixth president, Theodore Roosevelt. The most common explanation for the rise of the "teddy bear" begins in November 1902, when Roosevelt visited the southern United States to help settle a border dispute between Mississippi and Louisiana. While on the trip, Roosevelt went bear hunting, but had little luck. Others in his party did find a bear, which, cornered near a water hole, fought with and killed one of the group's hunting dogs. When Roosevelt saw what had happened, he ordered his men to humanely put the wounded bear out of its misery.

Courtesy of
Gund, Inc.
Clifford Berryman, a newspaper cartoonist for the Washington Post, witnessed the incident and turned it into a cartoon. Called "Drawing the Line in Mississippi," the cartoon depicted Roosevelt's dual accomplishments on the trip—negotiating border disputes and protecting wildlife. To Berryman's surprise, the cartoon was published in newspapers across the country. However, the bear had not really been the helpless animal Berryman had first drawn, but, rather, an angry animal that just killed a dog. So, the cartoon, as well as the story of Roosevelt's hunting trip, was soon altered.
Berryman redrew the cartoon, changing the angry bear to a small, frightened-looking cub. The story changed too. The newly invented legend said that, after having poor luck hunting, Roosevelt was given the opportunity to shoot a bear a cub that his staff had captured. Of course, Roosevelt refused. This account of Roosevelt's trip caught on and soon the cub was appearing in all of Berryman's cartoons featuring the president. "Teddy's bear," as it came to be called, quickly gained popularity with Americans of all ages.
The small cub sparked the imagination of Morris Michtom, the owner of a small novelty store in Brooklyn, New York. Michtom's wife stiched several plush toy replicas of the bear for sale in the family store. When they sold quickly, Michtom decided to send Roosevelt a bear and ask his permission to use the president's name on the bears. Roosevelt responded positively and Michtom, along with a large wholesaling company, Butler Brothers, began to mass-produce the toy bears. Michtom probably didn't know it, but he had created a new piece of American heritage.

3 Comments:

At Sun Jul 02, 12:32:00 PM, Blogger Stephenie said...

Interpretation: You will have a son and his name shall be Theodore, Teddy for short.

 
At Sun Jul 02, 02:18:00 PM, Blogger Colleen said...

Sometimes we see a scratch on the outside, but hidden on the inside, where we hold our teddy bear in our hearts, the bump under the scratch appears. Thanks for the history - I knew the toy was related to Teddy Roosevelt but never heard the whole story.

 
At Mon Jul 03, 07:32:00 AM, Blogger anna said...

Ha Ha Ha! I am definitly NOT going to name any child of mine Theodore!

 

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