The Adventures of Lorne W.P Vanderwoude

My name is Lorne W.P Vanderwoude. I was born on a Friday on April 26 in 1968. I was brought into this world by my birth mother. She had to give me up for adoption because of the fact that she had a mental disease. She held me for thirty minutes then I was taken away from her. I was sent from Red Deer to Edmonton just so she could not ever find me even if she wanted to.

I was three months old when I entered the Vanderwoude family. I entered into that family in August of 1968. My adoptive father was a police officer and my adoptive mother was a homemaker. I had an older brother and sister who were three years apart from each other including myself. My younger adoptive sister arrived in 1972 which completed our little family.

My grandparents responded by running across the street to see the new little addition. My arrival sure made a huge impact on a lot of people rather than just on my adoptive family's lives. This really did make me feel welcomed and loved from the day I got there until to this very day.

I was one year old when my best friend, Little Ted, came into my life. I am still friends with him to this very day. He still spends his retirement on my bookshelf down in our bedroom.

I spent a lot of time with my best friend for hours. He was so loyal and always stayed by myself faithfully. Now, I do realize as I got older that Little Ted was not alive. However, when I first met him, I fell in love with him. He even watched me as I took a number two in my diaper, then tried to clean it all up. Now I had number two from one end of me to the other. I am not too surprised if he had just as much number two on him as I had on myself. My parents were not too impressed as they cleaned both of us up and I was placed in clean clothes and Little Ted was bathed in the washing machine. I believe back then this was an old wringer washing barrel.

I had a dream one night that Little Ted had come alive and we went on an adventure together. We climbed into the back alley by crawling under the covers until we both rolled out by the garbage barrels in the back of our house. We roamed the back alley until we decided to crawl back through where we had come from.

For the first five years, Little Ted and I were inseparable. We went all over the house. Little Ted was my best friend! That is probably because I did not have any friends at church or in our neighbourhood. At night I had conversations with my other invisible friends. Mommy and Ornkie were their names which I had a great time chatting with them. Since I was in the basement, no one heard me talking to myself all night.

Later in my life when I was getting married, I took Little Ted on our honeymoon. I accidentally left Little Ted in the motel where my wife and I were staying at. When I discovered that my best friend was missing, I contacted the motel. To make a long story short, Little Ted rode home on the bus in a very special container. My father was so angry that I wasted money on that stupid thing. To my father, it was a worthless piece of junk. To me, he is and still is my best friend. My wife knows that this very important part of my life is to be treated with a lot of love and respect.

After twenty seven years of marriage, he still sits there in my bookcase loving us as he has ever since my wife became an important part of my life. He still shares in our adventures which we as a couple share together. He will be here with us until the day we both will leave this earth.