Greetings from the Naughty Bear Cafe

This weekend was my mini-bachelorette party. This is not to say that there will be a MAJOR bachelorette party at some point in the future--just that I didn't want a big fuss involving airplanes, Four Loko, greased-up strippers pretending to find vaginas appealing, or disorderly conduct arrests. It was just me, my sister-in-law, my cousin, and a couple of badly-behaved girlfriends... it was perfect. The girls surprised me with a sweet Apple book of photos culled from all their various hard drives, which made me both laugh and sniffle. And the cover of this book, splashed across it at full bleed, was the photo above.

My cousins Lauren and Leigh and I had just finished up a nice greasy brunch at a Shoney's in Harrisonburg, VA a few years ago, when on our way to the exit we spotted this painted wooden bear next to the cashier's station. He had a giant head and an ingratiating grin but what concerned all of us, immediately, was the gaping hole in the middle of his pelvic region. He had a little compartment for lollipops tucked away in there, so kids could just reach in and grab one. Cute, right? Except for the location of the hole. The bottom of which is a mere inch above the androgynously smooth, shapeless "T" of his crotch.

The more we studied his lollipop hole, the more his wide-eyed grin took on a whole new meaning. Reaching in there and feeling around while he beamed back at us was just... wrong. So what did we do? Took a picture of me with my hand in the hole and a similarly excited look on my face, of course. And that is the cover of my photo book, for all posterity. Me molesting a lollipop bear. And that wasn't even the last time I did something inappropriate to an animal statue in public.