** Click here for Episode 168 **
Congratulations to Richard from Bermuda upon his recent unions with loved ones:
I got married last year and as part of the best man’s speech, my brother returned to me my childhood teddy bear. This teddy bear was a gift my Aunty Margery made by hand from coarse curtain fabric and stuffed with old tights. Despite this I loved this teddy bear; he quickly became my favourite and I would cuddled him to sleep every night.
Fast forward 30 years and my brothers returned this teddy bear. I take the teddy bear home with me and it is with joy that I put him on my
bedside table. A couple of months later the wife and I are having a BBQ. An American friend walks through our bedroom sees him and all of a
sudden I’m getting the question: why has your teddy bear got a willy on his face?
I’m heterosexual and comfortable in my sexuality (always turned to the lingerie section of the Kay’s catalogue when wanking as a teenager), so answer me this: should I be concerned about the homosexual symbolism of my teddy bear?
Even if you were gay, I doubt your phallus-faced cuddly toy would have been a critical factor; and with cast-iron proof of heterosexuality like the Kay’s catalogue (and, alright, the happy marriage to a woman that presumably is not a beard/purse arrangement), I don’t see why you need be concerned. However, you probably should be a bit concerned about Aunty Margery. I’d expect that penis-nose nonsense from the Chapman Brothers, not a senior relative with a taste for handicrafts.
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Answer Me This! Podcast 
March 3, 2011 at 8:55 pm |
How weired! I’m innocently going through the Answer Me This Webpage and up pops a photo of my brother’s teddy bear. Yes I am THAT brother I was THAT Bestman. And apparently only two people read your Webpage.
What Richard doesn’t say is that we were each given a teddy bear. Mine was a horse and it wasn’t at all phallic. Mind you it was a horse. I always reasoned that why Richard liked it was because.
One: I was always jealous of it. My Horse really was crap.
Two: Humans tend to like things that are anthropomorphic. ‘Little Elephant’ has arms and legs just like a human. And we humans tend to like animals that look human and can stand on their hind legs: monkeys, penguins, bears and so on.
Helen is right to be worried about auntie Maj. She never married, and my family never discuss her past, save to say “she was a ticket inspector on the trams” which my mum says in the same tone of voice one would say “she was a fallen lady”. Still at least she found an outlet for her pent up sexual frustrations. I can only imagine what other disturbingly shaped teddy bears my cousin Caroline found when auntie Maj’s house was cleared.