My Pal - Adam Superstar

In a little white box-shaped house there is a blue room. The room belongs to me. It's painted the average country blue used in many homes, not forest green and royal purple, the way I would like. The worn carpet is mostly gray, but in some spots, where something was spilled on it, it is a faded sort of orange color. A pair of Lee jeans lays crumpled on the floor. To the right, a handmade toy box sits, waiting to be opened. Paintings of two little girls - my sister and me, a puppy, colorful blocks, and other toys decorate the sides and top. They speak of the love and joy with which they were painted by a wonderful, caring father. Seated among many other stuffed animals on the lid, there is a blue monkey named Adam Superstar.

Adam stands out from all the other stuffed animals; anybody could tell just by looking at him that he has been loved much more than the others. His long anorexic-looking arms and legs are covered with spots almost worn through to the stuffing underneath. The blue cloth of his skin is no longer the color of those popsicles that come as liquid in a bag, but rather is the faded blue of the sky just before twilight. The bright red, yellow, pink, and green stars and numbers that cover his body are all pale, only whispering of his once bright glory.

But of all the parts on Adam, the one that I like best is is face. It's where all his emotions are shown - where I look to find his thin, eternal smile. Some might say that he would look better if he had a fuller smile and if he looked newer. But somehow, if his face were just as plump and firm as it was when he was new, he wouldn't look as friendly. Rather than being so bright as to annoy me, the yellow of his face is faded just enough to be cheery, yet not glaring. And Adam's beady black eyes don't flash with brilliance, but are chipped and dull enough to be mistaken for a dark gray. They look at me inquisitively, constantly alert as though he is ready to listen.

All of Adam's rather unique features bear witness to the love he's received. But, the way he's been loved is not the way most stuffed animals are loved. Others are hugged and kissed; Adam is beaten. There's a perfectly good reason for this, though - he's a super monkey from the planet Superstar. On that planet, all monkeys show their love to each other by beating each other. Adam, sent down in a shoe box as a Christmas gift to me, doesn't want hugs or kisses, he wants me to smash his face in when I'm mad. He wants me to take him by the hand or curly tail and throw him has hard as I can against a wall. I don't beat Adam anymore because over the years, he's become accustomed to Earth and its traditions. We hug each other instead of beating each other on the head. Occasionally, though, when I feel a strong urge to show him I still love him, I throw him down the stairs for old times' sake.

Each time I give Adam a good whacking, it reminds me of the first time I showed him love in his barbaric manner. It was Christmas, the wind was blowing bitterly against the house. Inside, I was warm - full of baked ham and hot chocolate. Opening the shoe box and glimpsing him for the first time sent waves of joy through my eight-year-old body. I immediately knew - the way that all eight-year-olds know things - that this blue monkey with the velvety red nose was from another planet where they don't hug or kiss to show affection. Almost by instinct, I pounded him on the floor. The "thud" of his bean bag hands and feet was music to my ears. Enthralled, I did it again and again and again. Later that night, he was given the name Adam because that was the name of my best friend at the time. His last name became Superstar because of his home planet.

Every day after that, for the next four or five years, I took my new friend Adam with me everywhere. He underwent many different forms of creative play. Some might call it torture, but that was what Adam enjoyed. However, one time, after riding over him with my bike and getting him stuck on the garage room twice in the same day, he had to have psycho-therepy.

As payment for my wonderful treatment of him, Adam made himself responsible for many of the good childhood memories I have. Summertime would never have been the same without Adam. For years, from sun-up to sun-down, I would do surgery on him or tie him to the back of my bicycle and drag him through the yard. Even on trips to our family reunion, my cousins and I had the greatest of times because of Adam. I remember throwing him off a balcony at my uncle's house and then seeing who could kick him the farthest.

Adam was a great playmate and a good vent of my anger, but that's not all he was - Adam was a faithful friend. He always listened with one thin yellow ear cocked and beady eyes looking at me intently as I poured out my heart about the mean big kids at school. I could see his tears about to fall when I told him what those kids used to say to me. His smile always seemed to get wider when I mentioned something funny that had happened to me.

As a kid, I talked to Adam about everything. I took him everywhere and beat him lovingly nearly every day. At the time, he was probably my closest friend - of the non-breathing type anyway. But over the years, I grew less attached to him. Only when I would be gone for a very long time did I decide he could come along. And like most of my stuffed animals, he eventually found a permanent spot spend his days - sitting above the picture of me that my dad painted on my toy box. He still sits there now - nearly twenty years after I opened that shoe box on Christmas Eve. He is among a number of other well-loved and retired stuffed animals. None are so well-loved as Adam, though, and that makes him a real Superstar.