“Wow, a Beanie Baby bear!” I exclaimed, hoping Kathy
wouldn’t hear the fakeness in my enthusiasm.
“Not just any Beanie Baby bear,” she informed me. “It’s
Halo the Angel Beanie Baby. She’s a collectable.”
“Neat,” I said, reaching for the scissors to snip off the
heart shaped tag attached to her ear.
And all the girls started to scream.
“Stop!”
“No, wait!”
“Don’t do that!”
I froze, the scissors halfway to the bear. “What?”
“You can’t cut the tag off a Beanie Baby,” Kathy said.
Tia and Elise nodded vigorously, like the bobbleheads Mr. Ashford used to
collect of his favorite football players. I was starting to think that nodding
along with whatever Brittany and Kathy said was all those two girls did.
“Why not?” How was I supposed to play with the bear with
its tag always in the way?
“Because,” Brittany said, taking over the explanation,
“then it won’t be worth money one day.”
“Here.” Kathy grabbed the gift bag back from me—another
pink one—and dug around in the mess of tissue paper, coming up with a small
piece of plastic shaped like a heart. “You put this around the tag.” She
reached over and snapped the plastic on top of the tag, sealing it off from the
dangers of the outside world. Protecting it.
“See?” Brittany said. “Much better.”
Now I had a tag and
a plastic cover to get in the way when I played with the bear, but I nodded
anyway. Just like Tia and Elise.
Oh boy, Bowie's friends wouldn't like me very much ... I totally cut off the tags on my Beanies for the first few months. I eventually stopped, even though I never had any intention of selling them. Still have them all, in fact! :)
ReplyDeleteI cut off some of mine, too. But eventually I became that person who got the tag covers even though I didn't intend on selling them either. I still have all mine, too, in a bin somewhere. They were quite the hot item for a while!
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