Thank you Seymore

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Avery
As I think about what to write, I scan my room for anything that sparks words in me, a typical exercise I do to get my juices flowing. 
Suddenly, my eyes fixate on Seymore, my Beanie Ballz extra large seal (basically a seal, morphed into a sphere larger than a basketball).  His glittering blue eyes shimmer, twinkling under the light of my bedside lamp. He whispers, “Write about me” in a voice that I imagine would sound like that of Gargamel from The Smurfs (Seymore looks much cuter, however).
While staring at Seymore, my head floods with thoughts about my stuffed animals. One of the first stuffed animals I received was a faded yellow teddy bear with a saggy, bead-filled butt, and a neat ribbon. Based off of an episode of Adventure Time I watched in elementary school, I gave him the name Hambo, the name of Marceline’s teddy bear. Since Hambo, I have accumulated more stuffed animals than times Trump has played golf in office (229, I recently found out). 
Whether it be my faithful pastel Carebears, pink pig patterned with candy prints, or miniature black cat, I know that I have a special connection with each of these furry creatures. As a kid, I believed they were 100% living, only when I wasn’t looking, like in Toy Story. I never let them overlap in toy bins, fearing the ones at the bottom would suffocate, and I only treated them as gently as I would a puppy, never tossing or throwing them. I sacrificed my comfort by lining the edges of my bed with stuffed animals, even if it meant me scrunched in the center of my bed all night. 
Though I have grown away from my dependence on these toys, they are the one thing I cannot donate. Not even the “ugly” and cheap stuffed animals I won from carnivals. They serve as a constant reminder of my merry, carefree childhood, replete with whimsicality and fun. With the growing stresses and realities of being seventeen, my animals bring color into my monotonous routine. I feel that if I ever removed them from my room, I would be snatching away the thing I need most now: imagination. 

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