My first remembered toy

mrissa had to stay up all night last night for a sleep-deprivation test, and spent parts of the time answering random questions on LJ. Someone asked her what her first remembered toy was, and I commented with my first remembered toy. This is what I said:

My very first remembered toy was an enormous stuffed rat - about 2 or 2.5 foot high, I think - wearing a nightshirt and a nightcap. I got it before I could remember, and the story told me was that my grandparents were in town and that evening at dinner, someone told a joke or told everyone about a one-panel cartoon or something that invovled prisoners chained to the wall and had the punchline "That was a great rat!" They took me to a carnival in town, saw the stuffed rat, and History was Made.

Its name? Great Rat. I have no idea what happened to Great Rat, I don't think it survived the first move from that house.

ETA:

Another early remembered toy was from my years in Africa. Mom tells me I'd concevied a passion for a stuffed animal and reeeeeeally wanted one for Christmas, and this wasn't something you could find in the middle of the Serengeti Plains in the 70s. So she borrowed a crafts book that was making the rounds of the families on the research station at the time, and sewed the stuffed animal that was in there.

Which explains why I owned a triangular stuffed chicken.

Birdy Roostertail was a girl, I was quite sure, despite having a rooster's tail. The first incarnation was amde of felt, which didn't last very long and I wore a hole in it, so Mom remade Birdy into Birdy Roostertail II, recycling her tail, eyes, wings, and beak from the original, and using a red checked cotton fabric for the new body. You could always get red and red-patterned fabric in the Serengeti, since the Maasai people loved red. Mom tells me that one of our European neighbors bougth some lovely red checked fabric and made tablecloths from it, and then realized that the well-dressed Maasai was wearing her tablecoth fabric that season. :)

Buggy day

badnoodles, if you haven't seen this thread yet, you'll love it, I predict. Everyone else: if you're bugphobic, don't go. :)

And baby praying mantises are just damn cute.

Memeage and ouchie

Managed to fall over today on the way home from work. My foot turned, and I fell off my shoe. It's got a pretty thick sole, but it's most excellent for my back, but if I'm not watching where I put my foot, it's easy to twist my ankle.

Only I didn't twist my ankle today. I felt my foot start to go over, and then I think my brain went "Well, we could break the ankle this time, or we could slam the entire body into the ground and attempt to break the knee instead" and over I went, shrieking "Oh shit!, arms and bag describing a perfect cartoon circle. I was pretty much torn between being grateful that not a single person was around to witness it, and being annoyed that not a single person was around to help me get up, since my leg was hurting and I hadn't the slightest idea if it'd hold me weight. But I eventually managed to get up and limp to the car and now, a little over an hour and a good ice bag later, I think the damage is solely a skinned knee and wounded pride.

( And a meme, in lieu of anything else approaching content )