Stuffee!

In an email some months ago, Jagosaurus pointed me toward Stuffee… and I still haven’t forgotten it. Nope.

What’s Stuffee, you ask? Oh, joy:

Stuffee is a one-of-a-kind ambassador for health. He is a super-sized doll with a zipper down the middle of his chest and abdomen. When the zipper is opened you will find all of a human body’s internal organs.

Wuh? But! But! Why?

Well, for a good reason, actually:

Stuffee is used to teach about the human body and how it functions. In addition to learning about organ and tissue donation and the human body, children in pre-kindergarten through grade 4 can also listen to Stuffee’s heartbeat, take his pulse, and hold soft sculpture reproductions of the heart, lungs, intestine, stomach and other organs.

Look. Um.

I’m in favor of organ donation. I’m an organ donor. I support organ donation awareness. To sum up, “Yay, organ donation!”

But for days after first laying eyes on Stuffee, I had nightmares about a small child unzipping his outsized torso, from just below his blank embroidered smile all the way down to his featureless crotch, and watching glistening meaty innards tumble out onto a nameless museum’s playroom floor.

But that’s not quite as bad as the other nightmares, the ones in which a pigtailed girl crawled into Stuffee’s hollow gut and somehow zipped herself up inside. In the dark. The dark inside Stuffee.

G’night!