Don't Wink Bear

Don't Wink Bear

In a small house, in a tiny city in England stands a little girl all alone on her
room. That little girl is Anne. "Nigel? Nigel, where are you?" she exclaimed to the
empty room. "Nigel you better not be doing anything naughty, I saw you wink
your eye at me earlier."
Anne's bear, Nigel is a cheeky little fellow, as her mom pus it. He
winks one of his little black button eyes right before he's going to do something
bad.
Nigel is Anne's best friend, and her most beloved toy. He was given to her when she was born. “Nigel I'll tell Mum what you’re up to if you don't come out."
Anne is a little girl, six years old. She is a bit short for her age and still has some of her baby fat. She lives with her mom in their house in England.
"Nigel, you bad bad bear, come on, come out, we aren't playing a game anymore."
Anne took Nigel everywhere, even school, until the other kids started teasing
her about Nigel's bow tie. "I think it is wonderful," she had said to them. Nigel had
a bright and vibrant bow tie. It was yellow plaid with blue, green and red. Anne
adored it.
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When Anne couldn't get the kids to stop, she went to tell her teacher. She told Anne, "School is no place for a teddy bear. School is for big kids.” After that day, Nigel stayed home and had tea parties with Anne's rag dolls while she was at school.
"Nigel...please come out and play with me." she pleaded quietly. Big tears
welt up in her round, honey-brown eyes. Her face grew hot as she started
crying, not too hard at first, then bawling. Her long dark brown hair stuck to her
now, wet neck and cheeks. She started tugging at one of the curls at the end of
her hair.
"Nigel, where are you? Was Mummy vacuuming while you were taking a nap on the floor? Did the vacuum suck you up?" she asked the still empty room as she continued to look around frantically for her lost bear.
She started looking under everything. First under her princess bed she received for her birthday last year. Then she looked under her chest of drawers, in her closet, the pile where her stuffed animals are kept, in her toy box, and even under a place rug at the foot of her bed. She couldn't find him anywhere. "Nigel you aren't hiding in my room, I've checked everywhere." she said.
"Oh no, no, no, no did you decide to open the window so the air could come in? Then did you fall out into the garbage bin?" she asked. "Mummy said the
garbage collector man came this morning. Are you gone?" she asked starting to
cry even harder at the idea of Nigel not being anywhere in the house, but taken

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away by the garbage collector. "No, that did not happen, I know it.”
“I will look in the house. Don't worry Nigel I'll find you.” She walked out of her
room, sniffling very hard trying to subdue her tears.
First she went to the hall closet. She peaked in first, because like any other six year old, the Boogey Man was lurking in all dark, unsuspected places. When it was confirmed that the Boogey Man was not in the closet, she wet in farther, right up to the edge of the big hanging coats.
"Nigel are you in here?" she asked the coat filled closet shyly. "This is a very
scary place to be hiding you know." with all the strength she could muster she
separated the heavy coats. She walked farther into the closet.
She knew there was a hanging string to turn on the light bulb, so she looked up trying to find it. "Oh bugger" she said to herself as she jumped as high as she
could to try to reach it.
"Nigel, if your in here you better make some kind of sound, I can't see." Nothing, but silence greeted her. She looked around at everything in the closer. This didn’t help much since there was no light on.
Suddenly her imagination switched back into gear. She looked suspiciously
back at the coats. "Oh no, Nigel were you hiding in here, and the coats
snatched you up? Did they trap you inside them and then button themselves up? Are they not letting you go?" She asked more to herself because she didn't want
the evil coats to hear and try to capture her too.

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"Nigel? Nigel!" she started frantically shaking the bottoms of the coats, she
couldn’t reach the buttons to see if Nigel was being held prisoner. When no
sound or sign of Nigel was found in the coats, Anne decided the coats maybe had eaten a board game earlier and were too full to try and capture Nigel.
So she moved on, out the closet, down the hallway, and down the stairs to the
kitchen. First she looked in all the cabinets, all the ones she could reach that is.
which limited her quite a bit.
Then she looked in the refrigerator thinking maybe Nigel was hungry and when he was deciding if he wanted a turkey sandwich or a tuna sandwich, the door closed on him.
"Nigel are you in there eating all of our food?" she asked looking into the fridge. She checked behind the orange juice, under all the eggs, next to last night's left-over meatloaf, but Nigel was nowhere in sight. "Well I guess it’s good you aren't in the fridge, you are already fat Nigel." she said as she closed the refrigerator door.
Then she had a horrible thought. "Nigel, where you getting a glass of warm milk and fall into the loud thing?" she asked in horror, then paused to think of the right name for the appliance. "The, the, garbage...disseoble, no that's not it, what does Mummy call it? clipposale, diss, po, disposal! That’s it!" Then she
remembered the horrible possibility that her bear was torn to shreds. "Nigel please say you didn't fall into the garbage disposal."

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Once Mummy let me put a carrot in there and the disposal cut it up into a bagillion little pieces." She looked hesitantly at the garbage disposal hole.” not a trace of bear stuffing or a stray button eye. "Whew, thank goodness, but Nigel I still have to find you!"
She looked out the window in the dining room. "Oh no, oh no, oh no, it's getting dark. Nigel I can't go to sleep, not without you."
She continued on her quest to find Nigel. She trotted over to the living room and looked under all the couches and chairs. She looked behind the TV, but no Nigel. Then she thought
to look in the garage.
As she stood in front of the big door leading to the garage she said "Nigel this
is the last place you would be, unless the garbage collector really did take you.
She opened the door and turned on the light. She knew where the switch was
so she didn't have any problems with this one. She looked around the garage, at
the lawn mower, the rake, all of her old baby toys, and then she spotted
something in the corner that caught her eye.
"Nigel? Is that you?" she asked while slowly moving towards the corner. She
was within arm reach and looked closer. "Ahhhhhh, you’re not Nigel!" Anne had
discovered her grandfather’s old Halloween gorilla costume. But as any other
little kid she didn't realize this, she ran screaming at the top of her little lungs out
of the garage, slamming the door shut behind her. Then she started crying again,

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breathing in short, and shallow gasps from her fright.
"Nigel, I will never find you. How will I sleep, who will play with me? Nigel, I'm
scared!" Then she looked around to see her mom standing in the kitchen
doorway looking down at her distressed little daughter. "Sweetie, what's wrong?
Don't cry." Her mother moved over to her with the kind of glide that mothers tend
to have. She brushed Anne's hair out of her face, and wiped her tears away.
"Mummy, Mummy, oh Mummy I've looked and looked everywhere, but I can't
find him. I've lost Nigel, he isn't hiding anywhere. Mummy I can't go to sleep
without Nigel." she said all the while, crying.
"Oh sweetheart, Nigel isn't lost at all" her mother said to her in a soothing voice.
"I washed him for you so he would be extra clean and snuggly." "Re-really?" she asked looking up at her mother with wide, hopeful eyes.
"Yes, I did it as a surprise for you."
"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you Mummy."
So her mother gave her back her bear and Anne slowly made the long trip up
the stairs to her room. She climbed into her princess bed, turned off her lamp,
closed her eyes, pulled Nigel close to her and whispered to her bear, "Good night
Nigel, I love you." And just before Anne drifted off into an exhausted, dreamless
slumber, Nigel winked his little button eye.