Winnie the Pooh

I’ve read Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner several times. I actually listened to the stories on cassette tape to fall asleep when I was a teenager. I don’t recall the narrator, but I remember the stories quite well. I grew up watching The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which is a show I still cherish in my heart and mind.

Winnie the Pooh and his friends–I actually called them “the guys” when I was a little girl–are some of my favorites. This is where my love for imagination and friendship grew. Even as a child, I was deeply moved by the simple, but deeply expressive shows of friendship and love.

While watching The Tigger Movie, I started crying big happy tears at the song “Your Heart Will Lead You Home” by the talented Kenny Loggins.

Even today, as an adult, this song, as well as Kenny Loggins “Return to Pooh Corner” makes me cry. I have strong emotions about Pooh and his friends, and these two songs capture their relationship to Christopher Robin very well. The song “Return to Pooh Corner” with a new verse was written for Loggins’ third son.

Without A.A. Milne’s wonderful and delightful works, there would be no Disney spinoffs. I, unlike the stuffy critics, believe these shows to embody the original characters with a little extra thrown in. Rabbit is a by-the-book gardener, who cannot stand it when Tigger bounces into his vegetable patches. Pooh loves his friend Piglet more than he loves eating honey. He may seem like a bear of very little brain, but he’s actually quite clever and smart.

Christopher Robin even tells him this, a mantra that I have loved since first hearing it: “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” It’s a simple, but powerful reminder to adults and children that you can overcome anything in the world, no matter what others say or think about you. It’s a reminder that you can overcome your own inner doubts, because you have the intelligence, the strength, and the bravery to overcome what’s in your way.

This is something I need in my life, because I have doubts at times about how good I am at writing, or how good I am at coming off as a fairly normal person. These days, these anxieties do not come to mind very often, but I have struggled with these thoughts in the past. There was a time when I very much wanted to write, but struggled to actually put my words down on the screen or on paper, because I was worried that my work wouldn’t be good enough.

Now, back to Pooh Bear. Pooh, as well as his wonderfully unique friends, are still with me even as I steadily approach my thirties. They will always be with me, because I’ve grown to love them dearly first as a child, and now as an adult. I still have the book that my parents and sister gave me when I started college, and keep it on my radiator, along with my collection of Pooh books. The book in question is called Positively Pooh: Timeless Wisdom from Pooh. I love this book, especially the wonderful things that my family wrote in there. Their words of love and encouragement can still make me cry with happiness.

Pooh Bear and his friends will always have a special place in my heart, no matter how old I get. They were some of my very first friends, who taught me about friendship and love from an early age. The TV show The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is one of my classic favorites, as well as the movies from the early 2000s. Jim Cummings (who does the voice of Pooh and Tigger) as well as the other voices of the Hundred Acre Wood, are the characters they play. Their dedication to their roles further solidifies my love for these wonderful toys.

Someday, I would love to visit the museum where the original toys are kept. It would be a dream come true to see them, to know that they are still loved after all these years.

Part of me will always be playing with Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin, going on adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood, for “Pooh and his friends will always be there for you. But of course, it isn’t really Good-bye, because the Forest will always be there. . . and anybody who is Friendly with Bears can find it. In that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will alway be playing.”