Please meet Bern, a Hermann Original Teddy bear on wheels!

Please meet Bern, a Hermann Original Teddy bear on wheels!   He was made in West Germany, so he was manufactured before 1988, and is probably from the 1980s.   He is made of brown soft mohair and is attached to a metal frame with rubber wheels, so he can be pushed or pulled around.   He wears a little red plaid ribbon around his neck, and he has all of his tags.  He's about six inches tall and six inches long, so he's a nice compact size.

Bern loves being on wheels.   It makes his day seem to go so much faster.    When he sees other Teddy bears lumbering down a path in a park, he zooms past them at top speed, zigzagging left, right and then left again.   He goes so fast, he can't really make out what they're saying, but he's quite sure it's something like "Slow down there, little bear" or "There's a speed limit for a reason, ya know," or some such comment.

He admits he's a bit of a risk taker and he should slow down, but he loves to feel the wind in his fur on a warm spring day.   He especially enjoys going around a bend in the road when sometimes the wheels tilt just a little bit in the air.   He knows it looks dangerous, and he certainly wouldn't encourage young inexperienced bears to roll so fast and loose, but there's something about the thrill of careening down a sloping trail that makes his heart fill with joy.

It wasn't always that way.   He used to be pulled all over the place and left in the most inconvenient of places:  facing a wall, under a bed, stuck in the corner.   He was often tied to the back of a Radio Flyer.   Every time the wagon stopped, he would bump his nose on the back of the shiny red bumper.   One of the most precarious times he was attached to a toboggan, and by the end of the day he was buried so many times in the snowbank, he was sure his snout would never thaw out.  

There finally came a day when he was tired of being pulled this way and that.   As he tells it, it was late on a Saturday evening in May many years ago.  There was a soft light on in the TV room, and he heard what he thought was buzzing bees.   His curiosity piqued, he rolled slowly through the door, and there on the television was the Formula 1 Race in Monaco.   Watching the cars go through the old town, ripping around corners, with elevations up and down and through tunnels was the most exciting thing he had ever witnessed.   That was the moment when he realized what he needed to get himself out of the doldrums:  A new set of wheels -- and a steep hill.   He knew he would never let himself be pulled around again.

The very next day, he convinced the local Teddy bear repair shop to change his wheels to the latest and most aerodynamic style, and then he headed for a hilltop he spied not far from home.   As he stood at the crest for the first time, he knew he would be taking a chance.   What if he tumbled head over paws and his stuffing came out?    What if he lost a wheel?  Or a glass eye?  Or one of his claws became loose?   He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and started rolling.   When he got to the bottom of the hill, he was feeling, well, giddy with excitement.

Yes, there were tumbles and spills and lots of scuffs to his wheels over the years and little losses of fur here and there, but he just chalks that up to experience.   He may not have the speed of a Bugatti, but he's forging ahead through life at his own pace....whoooooooooosh.