The Bear Facts: Complete The Story
If you’re like me, you know the origin of the Teddy Bear. I first read the story in 6th grade and have run across it several times since. It’s a cute story, historically accurate, and provides an excuse to talk about Teddy Roosevelt which is always exciting. It’s also an example of strategic editing and our collective tendency to forget inconvenient truths. We’re far more interested in a comfortable story that’s missing pieces than an uncomfortable but complete one.
The story goes that while on a bear hunting trip, Roosevelt had uncharacteristically come up empty handed. While others in the group had bagged a bear, Roosevelt hadn’t been as successful. Some of the companions he was with found a bear, tied it to a tree, and offered it to Roosevelt to end his dry spell. Roosevelt refused viewing the situation as unsportsmanlike.
This story was published in the paper along with a cartoon praising President Roosevelt’s honorable nature. He was a big game hunter and warrior but here he was showing mercy and control. It was a heartwarming story and served as a humanizing element in Roosevelt’s public persona. The story was only bolstered when a candy shop owner and stuffed animal maker decided to make a stuffed bear and call it the “Teddy Bear” in honor of the merciful warrior of a president. It became the president’s unofficial mascot and Teddy Bears are still a worldwide staple.
That is a delightful story and is true. In fact, the story worked so well that Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft, attempted to do the same.
Taft and his supporters tried to fabricate a similar story of Taft’s good nature by presenting an animal for him to eat that they knew he would refuse. Unfortunately, the animal they chose was an opossum. They had already made several prototypes that you can find online. They are now collector’s items because there were so few made. For some strange reason, the “Billy Possum” never took off.
That part of the Teddy Bear story never gets told. It’s silly and diminishes the original. It’s more convenient to forget the opossum fiasco and remember the Roosevelt story. The Billy Possum is a story of embarrassing failure. Honor and civility are the lessons we’re supposed to take from Teddy Bears. That’s also why we rarely hear how Roosevelt’s hunting trip ended.
Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear because it was unsportsmanlike. Another way of putting that is he thought it was beneath him. Roosevelt told his guides to kill the bound animal and they ate off the bear for the rest of their trip. They left the paws for last.
Orson Wells said, “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” If the Teddy Bear story were continued any further than it usually is, we would have all grown up with a different stuffed animal guarding our cribs. (Maybe a possum?) More importantly, the public conception of Roosevelt would not be nearly what it is.
As I’ve written about before, the stories we tell in society shape that society. The kinds of stories we tell can be shifted by deciding when the story ends. An edited story might be easier to swallow, but it’s probably missing some key information.
We should all be skeptical of the stories we are told. Sometimes they are just true enough that we won’t look any further. We should always demand complete information, even if that information alters the story we think we know. Stories can be comforting, but that comfort can be dangerous.
