What is Real?

     "What is REAL?" the new Teddy Bear asked the old Teddy Bear one day.  "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

     "REAL isn't how you are made", replied the old Teddy Bear.  "It's a thing that happens to you.  When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become REAL.  It doesn't happen all at once.  You become.  It takes a long time.  Generally, by the time you are REAL, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don't matter at all, because once you are REAL you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."