I still have a scar. It was a gorgeous sunny summery day – August 6th, 1980 – and I was in my bedroom. I know the date because it was my 7th birthday! I don’t remember if my birthday party was that day but both my mother and my sister Darcy (12 at the time) were home and preparing for something in the kitchen. And I was alone in my bedroom studying my piggy bank. Actually my bank was not a pig at all. It was a brown fuzzy bear bank. While writing this story I thought it would be great to show you a picture of that very bank of my childhood but after Googling for days, I have come back empty handed. I’m having a hard time believing that with all of the zillions of pictures on the interwebs that no one has a picture of their 1970s fuzzy bear bank! I could go on and on about what I did find (see amazing photo of Sam Elliott below), but that is not what I was looking for.
(courtesy of 70sthoughts.blogspot.com)
(Don’t ask how Googling 1970s fuzzy bear bank begets a porn-esque picture of Sam Elliott. Ladies put your eyeballs back in their sockets and let’s get back to the fuzzy bear bank.)
Please note that this was not a FOZZY Bear bank. No, my bank was a plastic non-specific bear shape with little fuzz glued on to make it appear more bear-like. Similar to this one below (but not the same … because it’s a rabbit … and mine was a bear).
(courtesy of Etsy – you can buy this delight for $4.00 in the US …)
Anywho, my bear had my treasured money in it and it was chock full from the sheer weight of the thing. And I wanted to get it out and quick like. I can’t recall what I thought I was going to do with that money at that very moment, but I wanted it nonetheless. There was one problem, though. This bank must have been designed by my father himself because there was no stopper on the bottom of the bear. It only had a coin-sized slit in the bear’s head. Now I can recall many things about my dad and his favorite five words in succession were “put it in the bank.” Now you could substitute a great many words at the beginning of that saying like “Did you” or “You should have”, but the premise was the same. The money belonged in the bank. And now as an adult who banks often, I now realize that he never said anything about taking the money OUT of the bank. It was just about putting it IN. And this bear had only one opening – that coin-sized slit on the top of its fuzzy head. That was it! So yes, my father either designed my fuzzy bear bank or, at the very least, endorsed it because there was NO WAY of getting the money OUT of the fuzzy bear bank. Well, there was always fuzzy bear surgery … 🙂
At the age of 7 I had never operated on a thing in my life. I wasn’t even one of those kids who went around collecting bugs to see how the looked up close (ick). But I have always been the problem-solving type and surgery seemed my best option. So I went into the kitchen, grabbed a serrated steak knife from the silverware drawer and went back to my bedroom to cut open that fuzzy bear bank. I’m sure there were better ways to do this but my genius 7 year old self thought it best to balance the bear on my right knee while performing a sort of stabbing motion at its fuzzy head. This did not end well. There was blood and a good amount of it. I don’t remember it hurting, but I do remember about 2-3 inches of a bloody knife blade and my leg oozing blood to the south-east side of my kneecap. I’m sure it did hurt but I was more concerned with how I was going to cover up this unfortunate incident and keep Mom and Darcy blissfully unaware that I was trying to perform fuzzy bear surgery for money. If only I could remember my 7 year old thought process I could help bridge the gap between parents and their kids. But the only thing I can remember is that I threw the knife under my bed and walked into the kitchen whilst bleeding. When Mom asked me what happened, I said …. come on, you can guess it … “I don’t know.” Yup, I did it. I, like all of the other 7 year old kids out there said “I don’t know” when faced with that question. Of course I knew how it happened but I wasn’t going to admit it right away! As my mother – the nurse – was grilling me, Darcy went into my room and did her own little investigation. I’m sure it took her about 20 seconds to piece together the scene. She found the knife and my jig was up.
Thankfully the wound was patched up at home, no stitches and no major damage was done – even the fuzzy bear bank remained unscathed and the money remained safe in its carcass. But that’s the story of my scar.
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