nostalgia

Tonight, I had an interesting moment. We have this leprechaun bear in our possession -- it's an obnoxious thing that we have moved four times and has made it's way into corners of closets and under beds for the past several years.

I was first given the bear as a result of a very romantic/spiteful/sarcastic dispute in the middle of the DeKalb Walmart on some random late night excursion with Travis. I have idea what we were fighting about, but I can assure you it was something ridiculous that we had given way too much time out of our lives debating. Anyway, to shut me, Travis reached to an end cap, pulled off this St. Patrick's Day bear, and said, "All this grief you're giving me and I was going to get you this as a gift." Naturally, a series of sarcastic comments followed, which lead to Travis purchasing said bear for me as a gift. It's your typical St. Patrick's Day Irish nonsense, and the best part of it is that when you press its belly it says, "Top of the mornin' to ya" in the most stereotypical Irish voice the good people of Walmart could muster. In short, it was the perfect souvenir from obnoxious commentary.

Now, we have had several discussions about discarding the bear since then. Neither of us are Irish nor do we celebrate St. Patrick's Day. An Irish bear has no logical place in our house or our lives. But I can never bring myself to go through with it. The bear represents one of my favorite things about my relationship with Travis: our sarcastic banter.

We needed lightbulbs yesterday. We store them in a very inconvienent section of our hall closet. Out with our box of bulbs comes a little obnoxious bear. I smiled for a moment and then tossed it to Travis, who was playing with Evalee at the time. He laughed and pressed its belly and that familiar voice rang.

Since then Evalee keeps going back to it, lighting up when she sees it and giggling as soon as she hears his little voice. Why do I mention this? Because it really got me to thinking how amazing life is. Never in a million years on that boring night in DeKalb would I have ever imagined that bear would find me here, entertaining a baby that came from those two sarcastic morons. Who knows where it will pop up again in our lives again before it eventually stops working, as most things that come from Walmart eventually do. I have to admit, I'll be a little sad.