Mutsy

That’s the name of the stuffed puppy I’ve slept with ever night since I was five.

Yes. I still sleep with a stuffed animal. Get over it.

I just moved into a new apartment last week. And because of some scheduling conflicts, I first had to move all my stuff out of Manhattan and upstate to my folks’ place for a week, until finally lugging it all back down to the new place in Brooklyn. It was complicated, yes, but it meant I could leave a ton of unwanted crap with my parents. And this was a good thing, as I’m much too nostalgic and sentimental to throw anything out.

After returning the rental truck upstate, I was all ready to grab my satchel, leave my parents’ house, and catch a train back to New York, when I noticed something on my bed: in all the craziness, I had forgotten to pack Mutsy.

And after the wave of terrible guilt subsided, I realized: Mutsy’s presence in my life, up until that point, had been entirely passive. That is, whenever I’d moved to a new place before, I’d just toss Mutsy into my bag of pillows and blankets and unpack him later with all my other stuff. Like everything else, Mutsy was just part of the package. So never before had I been so confronted with the stupid, terrible question of: are you going to take Mutsy with you?

Or, more specifically: are you going to stuff Mutsy awkwardly into your satchel, and carry him around all day, just so you can take him with you?

Or, even more specifically: are you seriously a 26-year-old man who still needs to sleep with a stuffed animal every night?

Ahem.

I grabbed my satchel, caught the train, and spent a good deal of the ride convincing myself that I’d made the right decision. I reminded myself that part of being an adult is standing by your decisions, accepting the losses of the past, and embracing the possibilities of the future. And I would’ve been fine all the way back home too, if it weren’t for the line of police officers blocking the subway entrance, checking people’s bags for terrorism.

Seeing all those cops was like staring into a large mirror and suddenly having to face what I truly was, or more importantly, what I’d chosen to become. Fortunately, I didn’t get stopped, thank God. ‘Cause if I did, I’m sure I would’ve been arrested for being a stupid little baby who secretly needs to carry around his stuffed puppy in order to make it through the day without crying.