While driving my bus through the scrubbers after my route, I kept seeing a fuzzy brown face press against the windows: brush – brush – brush – FACE. Another driver must have found a teddy bear fallen off a lorry’s grill, and tied him there. We see ‘em all the time. I was overcome by sentiment; to their amusement, I slogged through the brushes to free the little guy. I scrubbed him up and poked his stuffing back in. He watched us wash our busses. Then he watched me drive ‘til I retired. Now, Bus Wash sits and watches me watch telly.
This was in response to the prompt of "Stuffing" for Weekly Challenge #186 (week ending 11/14/2009) for the 100 Word Stories weekly podcast. This was the second story I wrote. It was based on and inspired by an e-mail received on a radio "programme" called "Geoff Lloyd's Hometime Show" on Absolute Radio out of London. They had asked for listeners' storied about irrational feelings toward inanimate objects. They had people saying they feel sorry for the last bean in a tin of baked beans or the last piece of bread, getting lonely and missing their friends, and so getting eaten so as not to feel left out. Another listener said that if she drops a single pea on the floor, she drops another one so the first won't get lonely. This story was based on an e-mail from a bus driver who rescued a bear from the bus wash and gave it to his sons. My version was a creative dramatization of the event, and then a fictional variation with the ending.
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