Strong Snowy

I'm here with my very best dude, Strong Snowy. He's an albino gorilla with faded sideways eyes, floppy arms and a scrappy flap of a nose. He's got a ridge above his eyes for cheeky monkey expressions and patches of his fur have worn down the cross-stitch. He's about 25 years old now I reckon, and he's spent most of his ridiculous life at my childhood home in Preston, but currently lives with me in Manchester in my study. If memory serves me right, he originally belonged to little brother Rick, but he soon became a firm favourite among all three of us kids. We gave him a voice, a sort of low-pitched nasal cartoony ape voice (not far removed from Baloo the bear from The Jungle Book), and he developed a personality as a lovable fool, a sort of Falstaff among a clan of scruffy teddy bear layabouts. 

The toy has come back into my life because he's become a major feature of the novel I've been writing for my PhD. He features as a recurring motif throughout the book as the companion of Teresa, the main autistic character who I have closely modeled on my sister Jenny. In real life, as in the novel, Jenny has an enormous collection of teddy bears, a few of whom seem to be favoured over others. Of these, the queen among them is the unimaginatively named Teddy, who is even older than Strong Snowy and wears a pink ribbon around her neck. When Jenny visits home, Teddy is carried from room to room and assigned a spot to sit in. Moving her can earn you a quick reprimand because Teddy's place is clearly just as important as anyone else's. 

In the novel, I make Strong Snowy the chief plushie, simply because he's a little more visually evocative and imaginative than a straight-up teddy bear. Also, Strong Snowy has emotional significance for me and Rick as a key toy of our childhood games, and I couldn't resist the tricksterish nature of his monkeyness. Spend any time with Strong Snowy and you'll soon see how irresistible he is. He just begs to be grabbed and puppeteered, and is perfectly sized for perching on human shoulders and laps. I've grown glad of his presence in my study over the past couple of years. I took to sitting him on the desk in direct view on particularly trying periods of novel-writing. He would serve as a constant reminder of what the novel was really all about: Jenny, and our childhood together. If the novel ever gets published (still a big 'if') and if I had my way (another big 'if'), I'd put Strong Snowy on the cover.

There's a danger, however, that he represents a certain infantilization of autism that I don't necessarily intend. For me, Strong Snowy instead represents the magical agency of imagination; the instinctual imbuing of character and personality into fluff and plastic. There this idea that autistic children don't play 'properly' with toys, often ignoring what they represent. Give an autistic child a toy car, for example, and they might be more interested in repeatedly spinning the wheels rather than brumming it around. Jenny always seemed to do both - she'd be interested in the feel, motion and sound of the toys, but would also do the voices of dolls and bears and drive Rick's collection of Micro Machine cars across the carpet (often into violent crashes with the skirting board). There is, in fact, no 'wrong' way to play with a toy, just different ways. What autism tends to do is find a deep appreciation and affinity with the wholeness of an item; its sensory and structural possibilities, as well as its intended use. Sometimes the former might take precedence, sometimes it won't.

I have never grown out of the characterful nature of teddy bears. I'll always grab them, puppeteer them, give them silly names and voices, even if other grown-ups shoot me a concerned look. This is partly attributable to Jenny, I think. As an autistic person with learning difficulties and high support needs, serious play is Jenny's constant and she shows it is not something that necessarily needs to be 'grown out of'. Jenny has an infinite supply of silliness and it is one of her greatest strengths and joys, and one of her key methods of communication and sociality. She'll grab teddies or figurines and make them say ridiculous things because she knows it will make us laugh and mean something to us. After all, Rick and I spent hours doing the very same things when were kids. We brothers have both retained our silly, child-like streaks and I for one would never want to be rid of it. I'm saddened when other adults actively suppress their instincts to act daft. Play is fundamental, a phenomenon we share with animals so it is clearly a natural instinct. Play is also the catalyst for imagination - without the former the latter becomes barren and lifeless.

As a character, Strong Snowy dug me out of many narrative holes in the novel. He becomes much more than a motif to accompany Teresa, because he is much more than a motif in real life. There is something far more profound hidden away behind those sideways eyes, if we take the time to tease it out.