The Bunny Behind the Counter

From the outside, the storefront appears small, though certainly no smaller than any of the other storefronts that line either side of the stretch of Lincoln Avenue that constitutes the main drag of the Lincoln Square neighborhood. Once you pass theneath the sign of the second-hand toy store named for a long-forgotten breakfast cereal, however, You see how many wonderful can be packed into such a tight space.

Shelves display various cups, figurines, toys for all ages, busts and ornaments, alongside wall spaces covered with action figures dangling from pegs. Lunch boxes line the upper walls. Storage containers and glass-enclosed cabinets hold still more toys, as do the shelves behind the counter where Dave, the very friendly and knowledgeable proprietor, watches over the proceedings most days.

One day not very long ago, I was talking to Dave at the counter about something or other when the topic of how items wound up in the store came up, and he noted that sometimes he just finds things while out walking his dog. Case in point: A box of various used toys that I couldn't identify, topped with something I could just barely make out--what appeared to be a well-worn plush rabbit. Ordinarily, this would hold little interest for me, but the one detail I could make out clearly did draw my attention--the bunny had printed pads on its feet. "Let me see the bunny," I said to Dave, and he reached down and plucked the plush animal from atop the pile of otherwise unidentifiable ends and odds. I held the bunny gingerly--it was in rough shape. Its fur was patchy from years of hugging. Its head lolled to one side, and its ears lopped to the same side. It had split seams everywhere, most prominently down both sides of the front of its head, where the excelsior showed through.

In short, it looked like it had been well loved for many years and even repaired a time or two, but its owner had obviously decided that its time had come, and out into the alley it went with other relics of someone's childhood. "how much? I asked Dave. "Five Dollars," he replied. "Done," I said, reaching for my wallet.

The bunny sat for a few weeks on a shelf in my living room that is already filled with other treasures from the childhood of others: a Wiener Whistle and Captain Marvel horn that Mom played with as a kid; a Mary Hartline doll (from the '50s children's show "Super Circus"0 that I found on eBay; and various lunch boxes purchased at Quake either by me or for me by friends.

This past weekend, though, I finally went to my local fabric store and bought some thread that reasonably matched the old bunny's beige fur, such as it was, Now, my sewing skills aren't the greatest--in the past, I've patched ripped seams in jeans and reattached zippers, but little more complicated than that. I approached this job with trepidation--I wasn't sure how resilient the fur was after all these years, how much sewing it would take to shore up the bunny's weak spots, or how the whole thing would look when I was finished.

As it turned out, I should have been more confident in my abilities with needle and thread. I worked first on the back, which already had stitching in it (from one of its previous repair jobs) that I tightened and strengthened with fresh sutures. Then I went to town on the neck (front and back--old boy's head looked about ready to fall off) and the ears, which still didn't stand up any better, but at least they were no longer in danger of flying off of their own accord. Finally, I tackled the most obvious problem--the twin seam splits on the head. These took a while (and quite a bit of thread) to seal again, but once I was done the repair job was difficult to spot at a distance (though it was obvious--and obviously unprofessional--on closer inspection).

After I was done, I gave the bunny a gentle bath, submerging it in a bowl of lukewarm water and dishwashing liquid. It didn't clean the fur much--the white tufts on his chest still looks closer to gray--but, after it dried for two or three days, the fur was softer to the touch and, oddly enough, both ears were now standing up perfectly straight. So now the bunny still sits atop the row of lunch boxes on the shelf in my living room, but he looks a good better. Its fur is still worn, its tufts still closer to gray than white, and its nose still in sore need of a sizable dollop of glue. But now it's in a far better place than its was, sitting amongst other treasures of childhoods past instead of in a Dumpster or a landfill. It had been thrown away, but was now reclaimed.

And it is, once again, very much loved.