perhaps they shouldn't let me out in public

we just returned from an unbelievable wedding in sarasota, florida. the bride is a good friend of my husband's from college and she asked him to read a passage from the velveteen rabbit at the wedding. i'm not ashamed to admit that if they'd gotten married first i totally would have stolen this passage and read it at my own wedding.

it was the passage when the velveteen rabbit and the skin horse are talking and the rabbit asks him what it means to be real. the skin horse talks about how its not until your eyes fall out and you become loose in the joints and you don't care how you look anymore because someone loves you. beautiful. absolutely perfect for a wedding.

however, i was shocked by how many people weren't familiar with the story. so, at the rehearsal dinner, i for whatever reason, decided i needed to fill them in on the story line. i mean, how can you possibly have a fulfilled life if you don't understand the premise behind the velveteen rabbit? how did you learn to love?

so glass of wine in hand, i launched into the story with captive adults looking at my curiously as i explained about the old bunny opened on christmas day. and then, their faces changed in horror as i went into the ending, the scarlet fever, the fire, the boy headed to the beach holiday without his beloved bunny, and how we're suppose to be happy in the end because the rabbit turns real, even though he's not with his beloved boy.

i may have gotten a bit carried away with the retelling of the story. but... how do you not?

i wasn't the only one who felt so passionately about it. a few men actually came up to my husband and wanted to discuss the plot and other meaningful books. it was touching to see grown men want to discuss their meaningful childhood books. however quickly another man would come along and the conversation would turn to baseball.

i actually did not like the velveteen rabbit at all growing up. how could the nanny just BURN the bunny? was she 100% heartless? had she not read corduroy and understand the love between a child and his toy?? it didn't matter how many times my mother explained the horrors of scarlet fever, i decided i would rather die from sickness with my beloved stuffed animal than have it burned. puff the magic dragon had the same affect on me. i hated that song because the boy grew up in the end leaving poor puff alone. heartless, all of it. and yet the adults somehow got that these stories were lovely and everything was ok when people left their loved ones.

perhaps this explains my difficulties in sending my children on to the next year, or letting them to go another school. i'm not so good with the moving on i suppose. i think i can blame it all on too many readings of the velveteen rabbit. but perhaps i need to keep this all to myself and need to stop retelling the story lines in social settings...