Youthful follies

And the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down in rushing, rising rivulets.
It's been raining for the past four days. (No, I do not live in Mass, nor are we threatened with flooding.) Which naturally makes me think of this song, and therefore of Winnie the Pooh and the flood, and therefore of the umbrella.
when I was about 6 I had an umbrella. This umbrella was everything that could be desired: bright red with a duck on the handle. And I loved it. But I also loved Winnie the Pooh, and was fascinated by the part of the book when Christopher Robin and friends traveled happily down the stream on his umbrella. So one day, when it was raining very hard, and our side yard (the low spot of the neighborhood) was pretty puddly, I decided to emulate C.R. So I piled all my stuffed animals on the umbrella. Fortunately at that point I realized that I would not fit on the umbrella. But still, the weight of the animals was enough to cause the umbrella to break. A sad fate.
Actually, this makes me think of further follies of my youth. So, while I'm thinking about it, let's talk about the lamb.
I had a wonderful stuffed lamb. It had black feet and a black head, and a woolly white body. Well, I had read a story about either shearing sheep, or a boy who sheared his stuffed or pet sheep, I don't remember which. In any event, the point is that I was inspired to shear MY sheep. The first time I tried, it didn't seem that serious and I could have sworn that its wool grew back. So I sheared it again. And again, I could have sworn that its wool grew back. So I sheared it again. And this time after I was done, I looked at it and said, "OH NO!! It's bare!" And alas, the wool did not grow back. But I still kept the lamb for years and loved it.