(no subject)

In Chapter 6, IN WHICH POOH INVENTS A NEW GAME AND EEYORE JOINS IN, of The House at Pooh Corner, Poohsticks is invented.

It is a fabulous game. (Poohsticks, for those that don't know, is played like this: Each player takes a stick and drops it on one side of a bridge. Then you rush to the other side and whoever's comes out first is the winner.) The chapter also leads to part of my theory that Eeyore is a jerkass and I love him even more dearly just because of it.

Rabbit leant over further than ever, looking for his, and Roo wriggled up and down, calling out “Come on, stick! Stick, stick, stick!” and Piglet got very excited because his was the only one which had been seen, and that meant that he was winning. “It's coming!” said Pooh.
“Are you sure it's mine?” squeaked Piglet excitedly.
“Yes, because it's grey. A big grey one. Here it comes! A very-big-grey- Oh, no, it isn't, it's Eeyore.”
And out floated Eeyore.
“Eeyore!” cried everybody.
Looking very calm, very dignified, with his legs in the air, came Eeyore from beneath the bridge.
“It's Eeyore!” cried Roo, terribly excited.
“Is that so?” said Eeyore, getting caught up by a little eddy, and turning slowly round three times. “I wondered.”
“I didn't know you were playing,” said Roo.
“I'm not,” said Eeyore.
“Eeyore, what are you doing there?” said Rabbit.
“I'll give you three guesses, Rabbit. Digging holes in the ground? Wrong. Leaping from branch to branch of a young oak-tree? Wrong. Waiting for somebody to help me out of the river? Right. Give Rabbit time, and he'll always get the answer.”
“But, Eeyore,” said Pooh in distress, “what can we-I mean, how shall we-do you think if we-”
“Yes,” said Eeyore. “One of those would be just the thing. Thank you, Pooh.”

-The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne

Other excellent Eeyore moment: They come over to make sure his house is okay, and he goes 'OH RIGHT, YOU MUST HAVE FORGOTTEN TO SHOVE IT OVER'.

House at Pooh Corner, incidentally, is the last one. I saw Toy Story 3 twice*, and I was a bit worried I was turning into a sociopath because I didn't even tear up, but at the end of Pooh Corner where they were saying goodbye to Christopher Robin I was in the middle of Tim Horton's looking like my dog had just died.

Thank god for coffee.

This was the book I realized how magnificent Eeyore was, how incredibly cute Roo was, and how much I loved book Tigger compared to disney Tigger. Also, what incredible bros Winnie and Piglet are. Milne's way of writing is just... really nice. I smiled like a dope reading almost all of this.

Anyway. Example image of Roo's utter cuteness:


Having a fircone fight with Tigger

The last time I really read these stories, I was very tiny and it was in separate tiny books for each short story. So a lot of this was like reading it for the first time. It was a good experience. I'm pleased that this was available for purchase as an ebook in Canada, which is really hard to find sometimes.

Now I'm moving onto The Witches by Roald Dahl of which the opening bit on REAL WITCHES is located in this old entry.

*Winnie the Pooh is kind of the original Toy Story, which was hammered home in this book, with the emphasis given on why Rabbit and Owl are smarter than them, because they have fluff, being toys whereas those other two have actual brains.