Lions and Tigers and Bears….Oh, MY!

Last week husband and I were having a conversation about….something, and in typical fashion one topic bled into another, which then inspired a tangent that somehow re-routed us to childhood toys and whether or not they were given names.
I recalled one Christmas in particular I was given a stuffed bear that I named Ophelia and used to love to pretend it was my baby because it was filled with pellets that gave it a comforting heft to hold and sleep with.

In trying to further explain the wonder that was my stuffed bear, Husband was puzzled by a teddy bear having “heft” and being “dressed to look kind of like people.” I explained that the bears were really popular and were quite expensive, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember the brand name, suffice to say they were essentially a “designer” teddy bear.

This conversation, that I can assure you dear Husband has forgotten about, has had me cross referencing my brain and memory bank in attempt to recall the name of those elusive bears that have since lost popularity outside a small niche of people.

For the last week, in my few moments of down time at work I’ve conducted a series of Bear-centric Google searches in an attempt to exhaust my own resources before using one of my lifelines.

I stuck with Google Image searches because I knew I’d recognize the bears themselves immediately.

My results were nothing short of colorful.

Of course, searching for any combination of the words ‘designer,’ ‘bear,’ ‘American,’ and ‘teddy bear,’ will bring up photos of all types of teddy bears, people dressed as bears, a teddy bear dressed in a Chanel tweed suit and thousands of pictures of the Grizzly, Panda, Polar and Black Bear variety. But not the beloved toy I was hoping to find.

The search that followed included some permutation of the words “heavy,” “stuffed,” “bear” and “doll” in a combination I won’t soon repeat, as what was retrieved was a collection of images that quickly educated me on the homosexual subculture of Bears.

If you’re curious, I’ll spare you the humiliating task of performing a Google search which subsequently requires catlike reflexes to close the hundreds of X-rated pop ups that follow: Bears are essentially tall, heavy set, hairy gay men that inspire the waif-like gay men or just gay men, period, to cuddle.

Let's leave it at that shall we? Wikipedia it (yes, I used that as a verb) if you're that interested...

I quickly minimized the page and had a brief premonition of me being escorted out of the building, signing termination papers for looking at Gay Porn during work hours and trying to reasonably explain myself to future employers. My co-workers would have been SO confused!

Embarrassed for myself (isn't that the worst kind?!) and still none the wiser on the name of that damn bear company, I surrendered and texted my mom.

Me: Question: remember those expensive teddy bears you bought
us for Christmas one year?? What were they called??

Mom: Boyd's Bears

Me: Yes! It's been driving me crazy for a week!

Mom: And why are we thinking about these bears?

Me: I don't know! You should see my google history though: teddy bears,
designer bears, American bears, bear dolls (which had some porn!?!)

Mom: That figures

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait, What??

My mom is aware of the gay subculture that is BEARS?? What in God's great world are my parents doing in that big empty house of theirs? And furthermore, in what world should a person EXPECT to find porn when Googling bears.

How you know you're in the sexual slow lane: When your mother knows more about gay subcultures than you do.


(***Edited to add: Mom didn't actually know about Gay Bears, she just figured the porn industry will tag just about anything so it'll pop up in Google searches and Dad assumed it was for those with lower IQs who would spell bare as bear when looking for porn. Wahoo! I'm back to traveling with the flow of traffic on the sexual super highway***)