About a Bee 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🦈🦈🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

    Unlike the real ones, this bee spans nearly 3 feet in length, cannot fly (or move), and is entirely stuffed with cotton. With large deadpan eyes and an uncannily humanoid smile on its round, flat face, this animal is a beloved artifact from my semester in China, and a priceless symbol of my experience there.

    

    When my school held an English spelling competition midway through the semester, I, as one of the only native English speakers, had an overwhelming advantage. But despite being pre-disposed to win, I was too disillusioned with the school to care about anything they did. I only really took part because it would've been inconvenient to drop the competition.

    But in the final showdown, when I saw the bee on the auditorium's stand, offered up as a material reward for all my minimal efforts, that cynicism was side-lined by an unswerving compulsion to win

    After securing the bee, I carried it around school for a week, an inanimate companion to my classes. When I went home on the weekends, I'd bring it back and use it as a pillow while sleeping in the car. And when I came back to school on Sundays, the bee returned too. I was completely attached, tugging it around day after day, hugging it, patting it, looking at it with amusement. Sometimes, I'd just notice its blank unresponsive smile and comical unwieldiness, and then smile or laugh.

    The bee accompanied me during an extremely difficult and miserable time in my life. While it's not like it was a magical cure to my troubles, a consolation hug during a bad day was always nice. Just a small comfort in the grand scheme of things, but any silver lining would do.  

    It was especially helpful thanks to my status as an enby timidly trying to wriggle my way out of being a boy. Having a large stuffed animal allowed me to distance myself ever so slightly from the boys, who were notably plushie-starved in part thanks to their rules masculinity imparted on them. Hugging the bee also helped with dysphoria (hard to explain, but think of it like a sponge).

    At school, the bee which I toted through the halls was a bright contrast to the unfamiliar and cold environment, a lovable outlier that was decidedly mine.

    Compared to Uni, the school seemed rabidly focused on maintaining order and academic success (at the expense of my sanity). Homework and grades and tests were paramount, while rules remained ever-present. Simply put, the school's mentality was suffocating me. And yet as I carried the bee to class, there came a reminder that there was something just as important---having a fuzzy thing to keep you happy.

    

    I recalled that reminder once during an assembly, a meeting convened to reiterate many of the rules the school had on sleeping in class, using electronics, and wearing the uniform correctly. While the administrator rattled off on how only girls were allowed to wear white socks (this was a real rule), or how many times students were caught on WeChat, I held my bee tight and fell asleep in my seat, focusing on the warmth of the bee rather than everything about the school I hated.

    

    Just a day later, students from my homeroom began to bring their own stuffed animals to class as midterm exams came along. It appeared that like me, they also valued having their own soft stress reliever.

    Once the semester finally came to a close, I set aside some of our family's precious luggage space to bring the bee home. After all, how could I leave behind such a valuable friend? While oftentimes, stuffed animals tend to be written off as an instrument of childhood, to be cast away as you grow up, that couldn't be further from the truth for me. The bee stands as living counter-evidence to that notion, and as an example of how much a stuffed friend can help.