That is his name.
I realize it's not the proper "Maximilian", but that's his name, nonetheless. I named him when I was nine, maybe ten years old, after one of my dads gave him to me. I don't know why he was special, I'd had a hundred stuffed bears before, but I immediately knew he was different. And I can't really remember any stuffed bear before him, or since.
He was big, and brown, and naked, but for his red bow tie. His stitched brown mouth sewn into a Mona Lisa-esque smile.
Max-A-Millions has absorbed gallons of tears, buckets of snot, oceans of urine, (my daughter is a bed-wetter. What were you thinking?) even strawberry jam, and still he does not protest.
Within his raveling stitches he has housed love letters, hate mail, pens and pencils, and never once has he said to me, "I hate this about you. Change this."
When I am sick, sad, weak, or pitiful beyond toleration, my beloved Max-A-Millions nestles close, so that I can mumble complaints and grievances into his furry ears, and he never so much as lets free a sigh in frustration or disappointment.
He, at the risk of sounding like the fat girl who loves her stuffy way too much, is the perfect man.
Maybe it's because his mouth is made from stitches and he can't open it to tell me all the things I do wrong...
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