The Class Teddy

Last Friday when I collected Charlie from school he came bounding out of his classroom holding a small round soft toy and a large book under his arm.

It only took me about half a second to work out it was his turn to bring home the class teddy. Except it wasn’t a teddy it was “Dave the Minion”.

Instant irritation. I had better things to do with my weekend than carting a Minion around taking photos of it doing all the exciting things we’d pretend we do every weekend, because everyone knows that this is really homework for the parents.

Next stop was to collect Luca. I still had the shits about Dave the Minion as we walked over the other side of the school to Luca’s classroom, which was then multiplied tenfold when he walked down his classroom steps holding an enormous teddy bear. “Bertie Bear”.

Oh.My.God.

Seriously, what are the chances of getting two class toys on the same weekend? As I’ve quoted many times, things like this only happened to me.

It could have been worse though. When I was in about year two or three, we had class pets. However in those days it wasn’t a stuffed toy, we had real live class pets.

Rats, to be specific, and their names were Paul and Paula.

I remember the weekend I brought them home. My Grandma was staying with us, she had an extreme fear of mice and we’d willingly brought these enormous white rats into the house. And  proceeded to let them out of their cage. Not sure my poor old Grandma ever recovered.

Anyway I don’t remember much about that weekend except that the rats spent most of it roaming free around our house. Mum also tells me I slept with them in my bed. How gross. My poor old Gran must have been beside herself.

So I was pretty sure we could get Dave and Bertie through the weekend without too much trauma happening to them but you just never know in our house. We’ve done this many times before in school years gone past so I figured it was more of the same, right?

Wrong.

As predicted, Luca lost interest in Bertie about four minutes after we got home but Charlie was slightly more interested as it’s his first year of school.

First up, Dave helped paint the fence.

Now Dave was looking a bit plump and rotund so we made him do loads of exercise, then he had a relaxing float in the pool afterwards until one of the kids decided to stuff him in the filter box.

Then my mind started wandering and getting a bit childish and somewhat inappropriate. I dressed Dave up so he looked like a pimp or a gangster (decided not to put that one in his travel diary), and he had a wild night with Bertie on the sauce.

The one family member of ours who was interested in Dave however was our dog, Peanut. He could see Charlie playing with it and when he’d abandon it, Peanut would go up and sniff him and drag him off by his arm.

Which I didn’t really think anything of until I got home yesterday after several hours out of the house.

To find Dave, in the garden.

Covered from head to toe in dog poo.

It would seem Peanut didn’t take too kindly having Dave the Minion on his turf. So he took him outside and had his way with him.

So Dave had a swim in the washing machine. On hot. And soak.

However he emerged from his bubble bath minus his eyes which all washed off.

So he’s returning to school today, blind.