rent-a-bear

you can rent bears now. for birthday parties or to be in movies, etc. they come with a "handler" who tells the bears what to do. the bears are handcuffed and footcuffed until you are ready for them to do something. then the handler uncuffs them and shoves chunks of meat into their bear faces. then he yells commands like "hoi" and "butt butt butt" and the bears do whatever it is "hoi" or "butt butt butt" means.

i rented a bear. it cost $950 for the day plus i gave him a $50 tip so really it was an even thousand.

i wasn't having a birthday party i just always wanted to kick back with a bear and listen to some coltrane. it was just how i imagined it. i sat next to the bear and he didn't judge me for listening to a cassette tape instead of an LP or a CD or an MP3 he just chilled out and appreciated the music and he looked at me while i sang  "a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme."

after that we watched some re-runs of the fall guy and i told the handler that i wanted the bear to laugh like a "oh, come on, that's ridiculous" kind of laugh but the handler said bears can't laugh but he could wave his hand at the tv. so i told him whenever colt says something he should wave his hand at the tv and he did and it was pretty great. he'd wave and i'd laugh.

i asked the handler if the bear had ever been on tv and he said no but sandy duncan once rented him out because her house backed up onto the woods and the whole neighborhood was frightened because a wild bear had been eating dogs and cats from people's backyards so she wanted to rent a bear and pretend to kill it to make her kids feel better. it all went a bit haywire because the other bear showed up when the rent-a-bear was there and they growled at each other and then the other bear just ran away and it turned out sandy duncan's gun was loaded with real bullets and he thinks she was actually going to really kill his bear.

i told the handler that i liked the tv show bj and the bear and then i felt instantly embarrassed because that is a monkey and not a bear but the handler didn't say anything. he might be too young to know what bj and the bear is. or any which way but loose.

the bear didn't have a name. well, his name was "the bear" i guess. at the end of the day the handler put the bear back into his cage and drove him back to the forest or wherever it is that bears live when they are not being rented out.