Watching...

[shapeofthings]

Do you ever got the feeling you're being watched?

Oli watches me. He watches over me every night from the bookcase in the bedroom, where I keep my oils and jewellery and old notebooks of teen poetry, with the herbals and proper poetry books. He's 10 years old now, a decade of watching with those lifeless eyes...

I bought Oli when I was seventeen, in Costa Rica. I was on student exchange and having a rough time of it when I got him - a comfort toy, a ballyzoo animal to make me laugh. He has a growler that was impact activated, so if you hit or bounced him he'd roar in complaint. His growler is long since dead (and the felt on his nose somewhat lacking), but he's still fun to play with.

You can make him pull faces by manipulating his ears, nose and mouth positions - a trick discovered when a semi-random stoned guy was playing with him over pizza one night when I lived at college: folding his ears over his eyes to make him look grumpy, squishing up his nose and opening his mouth up whilse making "raooarw!" noises. Perhaps I'm easily amused though... still, laughing and playing are never bad things!

I'm not normally a teddy person - I'm still a tom-boy at heart - but I've got a soft spot for Oli, my comfort bear. He hurts when you throw him at people (the growler box is quite solid), as the odd snoring visitor has discovered, but he's cute and fuzzy, sitting on the bookshelf and watching me =)