![\"Terrible](\"http:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Screen-Shot-2018-06-19-at-42007-PM.jpg\")
<\/a>Terrible pic of Karen Salkin and her best friend, Froggy, taken on her exact middle-of-the-night birthday, which is why they both look so freaked-out by the extreme flash! Taken by…Karen Salkin! (But shh…don’t tell Froggy about Karen holding hands with the big dude at the top of this page!)<\/p><\/div>\n
Mr. X asked me what we should grab if we had to go right then, and my very first word was telling–\u201cFroggy!!!\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, over money, meds, and valuable work, my first thought was of my treasured best friend. Oh, have I mentioned that\u2019s he\u2019s a stuffed animal?! Well, maybe to the rest<\/em> of the world he is, but not to me. He is truly my best buddy. Froggy has been my loyal companion ever since I first moved out here as a teen-ager. It\u2019s a long story, but we locked eyes in a store in my hallowed Westwood Village and he\u2019s been by my side ever since. (I\u2019ve even given Froggy three or four new bodies over the many years we\u2019ve been together, and did an eye \u201csurgery\u201d too! His latest tongue actually looks just like the one on Clarence, my beloved late toy poodle!)<\/p>\n Yes, I am<\/em> aware of just how crazy all that sounds, but not to others like me, who are wise enough to realize the health value of having even a non-living entity to love. Grown-ups usually don\u2019t want to admit it, but many have their own version of Froggy. I\u2019m not going to name names, but you know who you are! (And I\u2019m proud of you.)<\/p>\n And let me tell you\u2014he\u2019s been absolutely comforting through thick and thin. I really can\u2019t even fall asleep anymore unless I\u2019m clutching him! I can\u2019t tell you how beneficial it was to have Froggy when my precious Clarence died. He was not a substitute at all<\/em>, but just having him to hug helped me get through those first terrible nights. (And he still<\/em> does!)<\/p>\n And you know what\u2014everyone in the world should have a stuffed animal to love. It doesn\u2019t have to be your childhood pal, or even a long-term one, as Froggy is to me. About a year after my father died, I got my mother the softest little stuffed dog you\u2019ve ever felt! The second I gave him to her, she named him, somewhat strangely, \u201cBeauvoir!\u201d Where she came up with that one, even she<\/em> had no idea, but it suited him. And about a month later, she told me that she didn\u2019t have trouble sleeping anymore!<\/p>\n Just some of Karen’s mother’s pals in Brooklyn. Photo by Karen Salkin.<\/p><\/div>\n Beauvoir was the one she cuddled up with to sleep<\/em>, but my little mo was no stranger to stuffed pals! She had started collecting dolls and such years before, long<\/em> before my father passed. But after he was gone, her collection grew by leaps and bounds, mainly from me, but many of my friends gifted her, as well. Of the three couches in the living room, one was \u201chers,\u201d one was basically \u201cmine,\u201d (because I visited her in New York so often,) and the third one was \u201ctheirs.\u201d And she loved them all. Especially the fabulous singing bears I found in a specialty shop in Rhode Island. She could not get enough of those!<\/p>\n And they really did<\/em> keep her company and cheer her up. Occasionally I even heard her talking to them, which I totally understood because I converse with Froggy quite often myself. Again, it\u2019s comforting<\/em>. (Okay, she might have gone a bit overboard by making me find panties for the \u201cnaked\u201d animals! But she didn\u2019t want them to be cold!)<\/p>\n Clarence lying amidst just a few of Maybelle’s stuffed pals! Photo by Mr. X.<\/p><\/div>\n Here\u2019s one of my favorite stories, about all<\/em> of us! On one of Mr. X and my visits to my mother in New York, we woke-up one morning to find that Clarence, (our real-life dog, in case you don\u2019t remember that darling boy,) was not in my bed. He wasn\u2019t with Mr. X either, (we slept in separate rooms in my parents’ house, which was our own respectful choice,) nor with my mother. We were hysterical. The three of us ran all over the house like lunatics, screaming for him all the way. We even looked outside, just in case. We were afraid that maybe he had crawled away somewhere to leave this level of life. We were beside ourselves!!!<\/p>\n And then my mother spotted him, though I have no idea how. He was calmly sleeping on the couch with her stuffed menagerie. We hadn\u2019t seen him earlier because his fluffy white blended right in with them! So even our adorable little dog loved being around his stuffed<\/em> brethren.<\/p>\n (Clockwise, from bottom left): Froggy, Odie, Doggie, Bernie, and Little Piggy. Photo by Karen Salkin.<\/p><\/div>\n Back to Froggy for a second. He now has his own<\/em> friends. There\u2019s Doggie, (who Mr. X and I gave my mother for Christmas 2010, so she had him for exactly the last year of her life and she loved him so much,) and Odie (for \u201cOther Dog,\u201d who showed up in my room in Brooklyn one day, and I still have no idea where he came from! Then Mr. X threw him in the washing machine here, by accident, because he got caught in the sheets, so we love him even more because he needs<\/em> us now.)<\/p>\n And okay, I have to admit there are a few more furry friends hanging around our house. There\u2019s Bernie the St. Bernard, who lives on the living room couch so I can hug him whenever I take a nap there. And he<\/em> has his own little friend, Little Piggy, because I didn\u2019t want Bernie to be lonely. Okay, so maybe I am<\/em> a tad nutty. But everything I told you about what help stuffed animals can be to one\u2019s emotional health is the truth.<\/p>\n So if you or your children or anyone<\/em> you know is having a little bit of a hard time with loneliness, anxiety, depression, or the like, maybe you should really<\/em> consider giving them, or yourself, a little stuffed animal friend. I promise, you will love him!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>