Edgar the Bear
By: Theresa B., Paul N. and Meghan H

Hi, I’m Edgar the Bear, and although you may not have heard of me, I live on 3 rd Ave. Of course my past times were totally exciting, just like any other bear you know. You haven’t met a bear? Well, then I guess I’ll just have to tell my life long story. Hold on, because it’s a very exciting ride!

I was born on October 15, 1965 on the holiday of Sweetest Day. That’s probably where I got my sweet tooth! Now back to my story. I was born in the Edgar Public School forest on a spooky, rainy, drowsy day. I was born earlier than what was expected by our local doctor, Dr. Harry Brown. As you may know, most bears are born in the winter during hibernation. Since I was born early, I didn’t have to suffer my first days through the cold. A few days after my birth, my parents took me around the forest and introduced me to my parents’ friends. There was Bucky Badger, Woody Woodchuck, Nutty Squirrel, and Bango Buck. They all seemed very nice and cheerful to me.

Let’s fast-forward about 5 years, when the school started to construct something mysterious. Of course I was just a little guy, and curious as a cat, so I went and checked it out. Over the next few weeks, I figured out that the mysterious thing they were constructing was indeed a football field and a brand new track. When it was completed, I decided to get fit and in shape. So when 4:30 came around every morning, you could find me out on the track. Over those few long months, I became fit as a fiddle, and all the girls admired my muscles, especially Harmony. She later became my beautiful darling, but I don’t want to skip ahead in my story, so you’ll have to wait.

That fall, I started learning at the local Huckleberry School for adolescent bears. It just so happened that Harmony’s mother was the teacher. All of my forest friends were there, including: Bucky Jr., Bango Jr., Earl Squirrel, Nutty Jr., Harmony, and Mertle Turtle. It was hard work and took much effort, but it was fun. I moved on to the next level that year with a grade point average of 4.0, the same as Harmony. Of course, all of the other tough guys were jealous that I had the looks, ladies, and the grades. But after a few weeks, I regretted having it all, since no one else was talking to me. So I decided to let my grades drop a little, but after a while things started getting out of hand.

By the time I graduated the eighth level, harmony was long gone and out of high school. Naturally, we still wrote to each other daily, and tried to keep in touch, but it was never the same as it used to be. She ended up moving to Alaska, and went to a great college there. So I promised myself that I would finish high school, get a good job, and earn enough money to go up to Alaska and ask her to marry me. I finally bucked up and finished high school a year early, because I knew all that joking around in grade school had not helped me one bit.

I applied for a few jobs, first, Badger Basket. And of course, I was the first bear to apply there, so naturally, my picture was in the paper. Since my picture was in the news, all the badgers in the town of Edgar got extremely mad. Their theory was, if the company is called “Badger” Basket, why is a bear working there, and there isn’t a badger in sight? So they went to the head of the business and started complaining that they should be working there, not a bear like me. Everyone knows that badgers are grouchy, and have bad attitudes and steal things quite frequently. The manager knew it would be a big mistake if he let them work there, so he decided he couldn’t accept me, or they would keep complaining.

My next job option was applying to the IGA, where I could bag groceries. They let me have the job for a while, but they soon found out my bagging skills were not that great. I always put the bread on the bottom of the bag, stuffed way too much in at one time, and therefore the bag broke. I was fired, and of course you probably know why.

So it wasn’t long before I applied to work for Stark’s. Now my only problem was that I kept eating the ice cream, instead of selling it. And when I did sell it, it always ran down my fingers, and a natural instinct would be to lick it, right? That what I thought- and I’m sure you agree with me- but the boss didn’t agree with me, and customers started to get angry with me. Their problem was that it was unsanitary and the ice cream was very hairy after I finally got through with it. So then I finally got a job teaching bears, not humans. Now let’s skip ahead to future years.

I retired in a couple years, seeing there were no more young ones in the small town of Edgar. Then I finally- after all these years-I went to find Harmony up in Alaska. It wasn’t hard to get tickets from a plane- since they were so afraid of me- because they offered me a free first-class seat. I arrived in Alaska, found her address, then, found her and asked her to marry me. Who wouldn’t say no to me? Not her, or any other lady could possibly reject me, with my looks and charm, they would have it made. I begged her to move back down to Edgar and she finally agreed to come with me, but before we went home, we went on our honeymoon.

We took a trip to the Bahamas, and it was a blast. Then we came back to Edgar, and built a house in the forest of Minnow Ponds. We spent most of our days resting in the sun, when we weren’t working, of course. Later that year, we made a garden. It had every plant in it you could think of! That year, we had a plentiful harvest, and had enough to last the whole winter. That’s how it was every year after that and now, except for a few vacations now and then. “Well, that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it”!