I Share an Old Story I Wrote

Dear Christopher Robin,
I'm sorry, but I have decided that the name must stay. I don't take well to changes either. You will never be 15, so hopefully you will never know how unnerving an age it is, when you find that everything and everyone around you seems to be changing. I wrote this when I was 15 and wishing my life were as unchangeable as yours, so you'll pardon me, I hope, for using you to demonstrate my displeasure. I never gave the story a title, so I won't invent one now. Here goes, and tell Pooh I can't wait for a taste of his honey.
Nostalgically,
Erin

As the sun drifted lazily up the summer sky, a roundish bear awakened to a pleasant rumbling in his tummy.

“Hmmm,” he said to himself, “I think it must be time for a small smackerel of something.” He ambled over to his cupboard but discovered, to his dismay, that it was empty. “Oh, bother,” he muttered. “Oh, well. Perhaps Rabbit is just sitting down to his breakfast, thinking, ‘I wish that Pooh were here to share this breakfast with me…’”

With these happy thoughts, he headed off toward Rabbit’s house, humming a little tune. As he hummed, he gazed at the birds singing cheerily in the trees, at the grasshoppers bounding through the cool green grass, at the puffy white clouds floating through the clear blue sky. He was so engrossed in his observations that he ran into a wooden door without seeing it.

“Hello, Rabbit,” he called, knocking on the door. Someone soon appeared at the door, but he was much shorter than Rabbit and had a rosy pink color, unlike Rabbit’s soft yellow fur. “Why, hello, Piglet. I didn’t know you were visiting Rabbit today.”

“Pooh,” Piglet explained patiently, “this is my house.” Pooh looked around.

“Why, so it is!” he exclaimed. Then, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, he observed, “Very clever of your house to disguise itself as Rabbit’s house.” Piglet laughed, and Pooh simply followed suit so as not to feel left out.

“Would you like me to come with you?” Piglet asked.

“I’m sure Rabbit will have two small smackerels of something,” Pooh said confidently as he took Piglet’s hand. The two friends started off toward Rabbit’s house, this time in the right direction. When they arrived at Rabbit’s house, Pooh knocked politely on the door and Rabbit reluctantly appeared.

“Oh, hello,” he greeted unenthusiastically.

“Why, Rabbit,” Pooh inquired with concern, “what is it? You sound like Eeyore.”

“So much to do, and no time to rest!” Rabbit complained. “Still, I suppose I need a break. Come in.” Pooh and Piglet obliged, and Pooh was very pleased to see the full pot of hunny in Rabbit’s cupboard. Upon Rabbit’s invitation, he buried himself within it while Piglet helped himself to a haycorn muffin. “Just be sure not to get any crumbs on the floor, and don’t get my nice new tablecloth all sticky,” Rabbit warned them as he munched on a carrot.

Just then, the floor began to shake as Gopher popped up through a hole he had dug. Piglet was so startled that he jumped, knocking over the table and sending Pooh’s hunny pot crashing to the floor.

“Howdy, folks!” Gopher whistled. “That’s some mess you’ve got there. Speaking of messes, are you done with my duper-duper paint roller yet, Pooh?”

“Super what?” Pooh questioned, scratching his head.

“The paint roller you used to paint your house!” Gopher reminded him.

“Oh, yes,” Pooh mused. “Now I remember that I forgot to do it…”

“Nagnabbit, Pooh, I need that roller!” Gopher shouted.

“Enough!” Rabbit exploded. “Look what you’ve done to my house! Go argue somewhere else. Now I’ve got more work to do! Go on!”

Gopher popped back into his hole and Pooh and Piglet quickly left through the front door.

“Rabbit doesn’t seem to happy today,” Piglet remarked nervously. Pooh opened his mouth to respond but another voice cut him off.

“Indeed, he should not!” Owl piped up as he descended to earth. “I hardly think the eventual depletion of the Hundred Acre Woods is cause to celebrate.”

"The who?” Pooh wanted to know.

“What, Pooh,” Owl corrected him irritably. “Depletion means the forest is disappearing.”

“Oh, d-d-dear!” Piglet exclaimed in fright. “Does that mean w-we will d-disappear, too?”

“It means, young Piglet, that we shall have to evacuate – that is, leave,” Owl explained crisply. “Trees are being cut down at the rate of 1.2357 per second for the purpose of building establishments which will house an average of six persons and will stand more than one hundred feet in height…” Owl droned on, and Pooh turned his thought to hunny and bees and how the first could be obtained without disturbing the second. “…Thus, I am of the opinion that a meeting should be held at the residence of Christopher Robin, who has recently returned home, to discuss this problem further. Do you not agree, Pooh?”

But Pooh made no response other than the soft snoring of his mid-afternoon nap. Owl sighed and fled off to spread the word around the Hundred-Acre Wood.

The next day, a small menagerie stood outside Christopher Robin’s door. Owl rang the doorbell and the animals waited to see their friend Christopher Robin again. He had been gone for quite a while… no one remembered quite how long it had been. A tall young man with a deep voice came to the door with a strange pair of earmuffs on his head. They were tiny and black with a black string connected to a small box. A terrible racket seemed to be emitted from it, and Piglet leaped in fright.

“Th-there’s a m-monster on his head!” he yelped.

“Nah,” Tigger assured him. “It’s some kinda magical thingamajigger. He must want it there, ‘cause he’s not screamin’.”

“Hey, Chris, who’s at the door?” came a high voice from the next room. Christopher Robin slowly pulled off his headphones and stared at the raggedy stuffed animals lying on his porch.

“Huh! That’s funny,” he mused. “I haven’t seen these old things for years.”

“Hey, who are you, buster?” Gopher demanded. “And what’ve you done with Christopher Robin?” The man didn’t seem to hear. He scratched his head and walked back toward the other room.

“Christopher Robin!” Pooh called after him, but he didn’t turn around. The confused animals walked away from the house, wondering what had gone wrong. Pooh did not go home. While the sun disappeared beneath the horizon, he made the journey to the Grove of the Six Pines and sat down to think.

“Think, think, think,” he said to himself. “I seem to remember Christopher Robin saying something about coming here when I need help. He said…” Pooh concentrated, hard. “He said the stars were windows, and if I asked for help, someone would listen through the windows and help. Now what did I have to say? Oh, yes…

Window-watcher in the sky,
Listen now from way up high.
Lend to me a helping ear
And help my problems disappear.

Please, if it isn’t too terribly much, could you just let everything be okay again?”

Just then, a falling star streaked across the sky. Pooh went back home and went to bed, exhausted after a long day.

Pooh awoke the following morning to a knock on his door. He got up and answered it. There, a very familiar face grinned at him.

“Christopher Robin!” he cried.

“Winnie-the-Pooh!” the boy replied joyfully. “Come outside and play!” Pooh obliged happily, not noticing that if this was Christopher Robin, he had shrunk. From a distance, Christopher Robin Milne, Senior, watched wistfully as his son galloped off into the Hundred-Acre Wood, which he had made sure would be left standing for a long, long time.