My Thorny Monkey

Thorny was given to me before I turned a year old. Today my children play with him. Thorny is a monkey that brings back many memories when I look at him. When I was younger my Uncle ran a Toy Store known as Thornberry's Toys. It was a family owned company which many of my family members worked for. My mom worked a couple of days a week in the office when I was between the ages of 2 and 9 years old. I can remember going there as a child and walking up and down the aisles of toys. I remember going to work with my mom some days and eating in the little lunch room. For some reason I remember the wall sized sunset nature picture behind the lunch table. Usually I felt really special when I went to the Toy Store. My sister worked at the store and she had a name badge made up for me. I would walk around with my name badge on and pretend that I worked in the store too. I would straighten up shelves and wait for some customer to ask me for help. They had a party room in the store in St. Matthews and I would play in there and watch TV while my mom caught up on paper work. I was a girl scout back then, so during cookie time my Uncle would buy cases of cookies from me so that I could be the top seller in my troop. Then when the boxes came in he would sell the cookies at the register to customers. I remember loving it when my mom's birthday came around, because the sign out front with Thorny riding a bike would always announce it. I loved seeing our names up on that sign. I think I liked seeing my mom's so much, because there would always be some clever saying and because my mom does not like any kind of attention to her birthday. I always thought it was so funny when we would drive past the store and the Thorny on his bike  would be missing from the sign. People would steal him all of the time. I am not sure how they did it without getting caught, but somehow they managed to climb up there and get him off. The family thought it was funny also, they would place missing signs looking for him. It even got attention in the Courier Journal when he was taken. Usually he would turn up in some ditch or someone would return him to the store. Sure enough he would go right back up on that sign riding his bike, just to be stolen again. One of my fondest memories was when my Uncle threw me a huge 5th birthday party at his house. Thorny made an appearance at the party and everything. Later I found out that it was my cousin who dressed up as Thorny. I can't imagine how much he must have hated that, being 17 dressed up as a monkey at a kid's birthday party. The company went out of business around the time that I was 9 years old. When ToysRUs came into town we all vowed that we would NEVER shop there, but of course we all do now. They were the reason for the loss in sales and the loss of the store. Today Thorny wears my old size 2T toy store shirt and jeans. His ears are starting to fall of and he is pretty ragged.... but he is my Thorny. He is many fond and happy memories, and and he reminds me to be thankful for the wonderful family that I have.