Bobo

Last weekend I went for a walk in Comfort, TX, and I found this ------->

It was the head of someone's poor teddy bear, left all alone on a badly paved road, carried there by running waters after a rain.

The bear's ears were red on the inside and it was missing an eye. Oh, and it looked like I might catch the bird flu if I got near it. This picture is at 10x zoom.

But was this someone's trash, callously tossed aside and left like so much litter? Or did a child wear it out while playing with it endlessly until the head was all that was left, and then it fell out of a bag on the way to grandma's house? To be sure, I'll never know, because it was a bad side of town and I wasn't going to knock on any doors and ask.

I didn't have a teddy bear when I was a kid (or if I did, then I repressed it), so I didn't fade back into some fond Kaneian realization of my lost childhood. However, I was reminded of a certain part of town where I grew up. West-side, where I never lived. It was dangerouse. It was on the dustier side of the tracks, the one with all of the industrial parks and the water treatment plant. Sure, that bear's head could have lain anywhere, but I'd like to imagine it was out there, where the dogs bark extra mean and fences are a little more sagging.

I'm being unfair, because that is the side of town I liked to run in the most. It had a lack of cars and real traffic. Also the river was on that side of town, which meant there was an abandoned train trussel to be played upon. Since I wasn't real familiar with it aside from afternoon runs, it felt like an adventure to glide through streets where people were a little more furtive and silent, where lawns lacked leaves in the fall and where street signs were more ventilated. You can tell I grew up in a small town, because I'm describing one small part of town that was in no real, meaningful way different from the other as if I were Richard Burton on an expedition.

My prejudice stems from the fact that my elementary school, one of two, was on the other side of town. We had a rhyming taunt that labeled us as the best and them as the pest. Even as children, we could appreciate that the names were easily reversed. But it was different enough. My sister attended there before I matriculated into kindergarten at my alma mater, Abilene Elementary, whence she joined me. I retain a vague memory of going to fun night at West Elementary during my sister's tenure. It was not good. I'm probably mixing it up with Halloween, but I don't really care. So, in retrospect, that school was the worst!

Eventually we all got over it in the sixth grade, and our prejudices focused on social groups rather than geography. Thank goodness for Junior High, right? And eventually I took up running to while away my youth. Which took me to the misunderstood west side of town, and that brings me full circle to Bobo's poor head. If I found it back home, this is where I would fully expect it to be. Right next to the railroad ties, some plastic bags caught in a bush, an empty Mountain Dew bottle, and a human femur.