Gavin was 10 when he lost his favorite stuffed animal, Croco, a Disney crocodile that Toño had given him for his first Christmas. We looked everywhere and couldn’t find him. The last we had seen of Croco was at my mom’s in Raleigh…but after that, nothing. Gavin was very sad.
Someone suggested to check eBay to see if we could find another Disney crocodile. We didn’t tell Gavin. We ordered one from eBay and when we got it in the mail Pat and I realized that there was no way we could pass him on as the original Croco…and this letter happened…(Gavin received a box in the mail with this letter and his new stuffed crocodile).
April 18, 2006
Dear Gavin:
I have so much to tell you!
I know you have been wondering whatever happened to me! It’s a story of adventure and love. Mainly love…to tell you the truth. Accidental love, which is the way it usually happens.
I came back with you from Raleigh, you may remember. Somehow, I fell between the seat and the side door of you aunt’s car. When she stopped for gas and she opened the door I fell. Nobody saw me, and I was desperate. I was sort of scared of being run over, too. So, it was a double desperation. You guys got back in the van and she backed off, thankfully missing me by inches!! Seriously…I saw the tire pass my snout and felt it whoosh by! I was left on that gas station parking in South Carolina, my heart pumping fast with visions of me flattened by a tire and far away from you.
I laid there for what seemed 45 minutes, but it must have been only 7. I wasn’t feeling lucky at all!
A green van parked badly and missed me by about 2 feet. I’m glad t
here are people who park badly, like your mother! The doors flew open. A little girl came out real fast and the mom called out to slow down, that the bathroom would still be there. I guess she needed to pee and you know how little kids have no control. She was jumping up and down saying…” please hurry mom” but the mom was unbuckling a little baby from a car seat.
My vision was sort of weird, as I was looking at things sideways. Sort of like trying to watch TV when you are laying down. I’ve done that before, when you’ve taken me downstairs and we have watched TV together. It always takes a while to get used to the sideways perspective.
The little girl, who turned out to be Emma, suddenly saw me on the ground. She forgot about peeing and bent down to pick me up. I though “Ugh!! A girl!” I mean, apart from Tati, and Kendra, and Maja and Mercedes and your mom, I hadn’t really been touched by a girl before. She hugged me!! Real tight. If she had hugged me for a couple more seconds, I would have passed out. But I didn’t.
Emma wasn’t the love part, by the way. Don’t worry. She was the accident part.
She smells like a girl! Her mom makes her take baths every day and she uses a lot of stuff in her hair. I do miss your smell.
Anyway, back to what I was writing to you about: Emma picked me up and hugged me (ugh!) and jumped up and down (again!) but not from almost peeing in her pants. This time from excitement at finding me. She does have some taste !
“Mommy, mommy, look what I found!” she told her mother. Her mom was by now holding the baby and locking the van door. She was in a hurry, so she didn’t pay any attention to Emma. Just took her hand and walked into the store and straight into the women’s bathroom. You know I can’t close my eyes, so I tried to look anywhere but the stalls and when I couldn’t do that (her mom took me from Emma and plopped me down on a counter by the sinks), I just unfocused my eyes. You can do that if you open your eyes wide and not look at anything. But it gives you a headache. I was very uncomfortable in there, to tell you the truth.
Emma didn’t forget me in the toilets, thank God! After washing her hands she picked me up and hugged me tight again. Her mom finally looked down and saw me in her arms. She screwed up her nose and said, with a disgusted look in her face “Where did you find THAT thing, Emma?” That’s when I figured her name was Emma, by the way.
Emma hugged me tighter and said in a tiny voice, “On the ground outside.” I’ve found since then that she uses that voice a lot to get things from her mom. It’s sort of a weepy voice and because she is cute and has big eyes (OK, I noticed) she does sort of look miserable and in need of affection. She doesn’t get me often, you know I’m tough, but her mom gives in a lot! This time she did, but not very happily. Pretty disgusted, to tell you the truth. I don’t know WHO she thought I had belonged to, but she had a plastic bag in the baby’s diaper bag and put me in there, holding me by the tail with two fingers. I still don’t like her very much.
My day was not going well!!! I’d lost you and now I was inside a plastic bag that had been intended for a poopy diaper. YUK!!!
I didn’t see much after that. Just muffled voices while the mom put me in the back of the van. I was stuffed in between a suitcase and a stroller. I wasn’t comfortable, but I slept.
When I finally woke up the van had stopped, and everything was being unpacked. I could still only hear muffled voices and could not see anything because I was in that plastic bag, but I could tell it was dark, so we must have been driving for quite a while. I could hear the sound of the waves, so I thought we might be at the beach.
How could I get back to you now????
Crocodile tears are supposed to be giant tears, and they are.
Someone put the plastic bag with me inside in what I could guess was the laundry room. It smelled of detergent. And left me there. It was dark and lonely. My throat hurt a lot, too, and I wasn’t sure whether I was getting a cold or it was me thinking of you. I thought of you all night long.
I guess Emma forgot me. Or she may have been asleep and been put to bed without being woken. I think the mom is the type who would imagine cavities multiplying in her kids’ mouth if they did not brush their teeth before going to bed. So, I don’t know.
The next thing I remember was that I was unceremoniously flung inside the washing machine, in the warm cycle at least, with a bunch of towels. I told you the mom thinks of bacteria a lot!
I was washed and dried. When the mom took me out of the dryer I was ok, though a bit fluffier and greener.
The mom was smiling when she called Emma and told her she had a surprise for her. Emma squealed when she saw me (girls!) and hugged me tight. She does that a LOT! The mom said: “here’s your new clean alligator”. ALLIGATOR!! I almost choked, though things have changed since then.
I had to play with Emma all morning long. We had tea and cake (pretend of course) and then she married me to a teddy bear with a tutu and earrings. Awful! Who would choose someone like that? Way too frivolous for my taste, of course. The bear had no interest in me either, thank God! We couldn’t do anything except to go along with the stupid farce. I thought of our animal wars. My throat started to hurt, again.
In the afternoon Emma forgot me. I laid on the floor where she had left me and thought of you and how I could get back to you.
I laid there for a long time. The mom vacuumed the room and put me with a bunch of other stuffed animals in a trunk.
I think a couple of days went by, in darkness and loneliness.
I hope you understand what happened next. I had no choice in this, believe me. And it wasn’t only because of the loneliness and my cold.
The trunk was opened suddenly, and Emma pulled me out by the tail. She told me that she was really going to marry me off this time.
She stood me up (you know sometimes I can sort of stand up) and she sat cross-legged in front of me. She reached behind her, and she brought out Ally! I was shocked. I could only see a green snout and a piece of cloth tied around her poor head. It looked more like an Arab headgear than a veil, but I imagine Emma thought it looked like a veil.
I saw Ally’s eyes, horrified at the scene she was to act. She was plunked right beside me, and I could see that she had “Florida Everglades” stamped on her back.
She was an alligator and I was in Florida! Those were the only two thoughts that kept repeating in my head while I was being married for the second time in my life.
We had a reception later, with tea and cake and a few of her other stuffed animals were invited too. The Fru Fru bear, I guess you can call her my first wife, was there also. Not interested. I guess happy that she and I would no longer have to pretend at anything together again.
So here we were, Ally and I, married to each other. Totally horrified and speechless at the situation. It took my mind off you, for sure!!
When Emma tired of our wedding reception, she left us sitting in front of her little teacups and her teapot.
My heart was beating so hard I could hear it in my ears. I didn’t want to hyperventilate in front of an alligator. I tried to maintain my composure. But it was hard.
We were silent for a long time. I guess neither one of us wanted to be the first to speak. But the funny thing is that we must have both realized the same thing at the same time: compared to all the dolls and bears scattered in Emma’s room, we were each other’s closest “being”.
It felt sort of like a relief to have her among everyone else. I felt a bit weird, but Ally didn’t seem my enemy anymore. I can’t explain it any other way.
We both started to speak at the same time. And we laughed at the same time. And tried to speak at the same time again. I finally said: “you go first” and she told me her name was Ally and I told her mine and we spent the rest of the day telling each other our life’s story.
When I told her about you, she said: “What a cool kid! You were lucky”. “Yeah,” I said, “he never married me off to anyone!” And we both got uncomfortable about that but in a funny way.
We’ve been talking since then. Between getting married (4 times now but Emma only marries us to each other!) and drinking tea and eating cake, we talk and talk and talk. We’ve gone beyond talking about each other’s life. We seem to say a lot about other things, too. Which is good, because we would be so bored without that.
Ally misses her family and I miss you. A lot.
When Tico was born (we thought of naming him Teacup for all the teas we had drunk together with Emma but it is a bit of a stupid name for a croco-alligator) we both knew what to do.
I can’t go to you, but I’m sending Tico to keep you company and to make sure that you are never truly without me. Alligators and crocodiles are not as attached to their young as humans are, but I thought it was something special when Ally immediately said that we should send him to you.
I am good! I hope you have a good life, too! And I hope you find a girl you can talk to.
Be happy with Tico.
Your best friend forever, Croco