MR. PUFFY COMPANY

I remember being incredulous when my boyfriend told me about the blanket that he slept with every night.  What amazed me wasn’t the fact that a nineteen-year-old was sleeping with a blanket that he’d had as long as he could remember.  What surprised me was that the blanket had a name.

“You call your blanket Mr. Puffy Company?” I asked.  I didn’t even try to hide my surprise.

“That’s its name,” he replied cheerfully.

“Why in the world would you name your blanket Mr. Puffy Company?”  I was wondering what kind of a precocious three-year-old he must have been to bestow such a name on a blanket.

“No – that’s the name it came with,” he insisted.  “That’s what it’s called.”

I was still incredulous.

It wasn’t until we were engaged and I was helping him move his belongings out of the apartment where he’d been living that I met Mr. Puffy Company.  The moment that I made the acquaintance of this extraordinary fuzzy being, I understood precisely why Mark had been so adamant about the moniker.  You need only to look at the blanket to know that his name is Mr. Puffy Company, and he could never be given any other title.

I think it’s safe to say that Mr. Puffy (as we affectionately call him) played a significant role in my husband’s childhood.  I suppose that his importance would pale in comparison to the blanket which Linus carries in Peanuts, but you cannot have a blanket named Mr. Puffy Company without becoming curiously attached to it.

I wonder what Mr. Puffy would be able to tell me about my husband if he could speak to me.  He could tell me about the years in Japan that Mark does not remember; he could describe forts which he helped to construct; he could tell me about warm Georgia nights and cold evenings in Chicago.  For a blanket, he’s been through a lot.  But he always came through with flying colors, and he was never left behind.  He is too substantial and friendly a blanket for that.  He went to college with Mark, and after our wedding he came to live with us in our new apartment.  When the nights grew cold, we spread him over our bed, and I learned of Mr. Puffy’s extraordinary warmth and comforting properties.

One cannot come through a lifetime of service without sustaining a few injuries.  Mr. Puffy is scarred from years of love and travel.  But for a blanket his age, Mr. Puffy looks remarkably well.  His plaid is still bright, and his powers of hospitality have not diminished. 

We were given a beautiful Egyptian cotton blanket as a wedding gift.  It is a rather luxurious thing to have on one’s bed, and as poor college students we feel that it elevates us slightly above the ranks of the unmarried folk who live above and beside us.  We also have a lovely quilt which I coveted in a magazine picture for several months until it went on sale, and which I convinced Mark to let me buy because it would make our bed seem more grown up.  But despite these touches of sophistication, it is Mr. Puffy who makes our bed inviting.  He is the one we pull over our heads in the morning as we try to deny that we must get up and go to our classes.  He is the one we pull back and forth during the night, both trying to get our fair share.

If you name something, it becomes a friend.  I’m not sure I would have quite believed that before I met Mr. Puffy Company, but it’s true.  I talked to someone recently who kept chickens for a while, and had eventually killed and eaten all of them.  “I will never name chickens again!” she said.  It’s like that with Mr. Puffy Company.  We could never just throw him out or give him away, because he’s ours, and he has a name.  He’s like part of the family. 

Someday, our children will sleep with him, and he will help them build forts and keep them company on stormy nights.  They, too, will know that he is no ordinary blanket, because he has a name.  He is Mr. Puffy Company.