"Respired"

As you may recall during one of my first posts I commented on how cool I thought Webkinz were.
My opinion has changed.

Picture it: I'm sitting in my studio upstairs, and from upstairs you can hear anything and everything that's going on downstairs. I hear Mr. Simpleton say, "What's wrong, Garrett?". Then, I hear the unmistakable sound of sniffling (and I get that knot in my stomach because, as a mother, you know he just wiped his nose on his sleeve). My daughter, Abby, chimes in and explains that Garrett's froggie expired on Webkinz World. Daddy tries to console Garrett and eventually I hear Garrett ask him, "Dad, will you take me to mom?"

So, up the stairs they come. Garrett is sniffling loudly, obviously trying to dry it up before he gets to me. I pretend I haven't heard anything from downstairs and as he comes in I can tell he's fighting back fierce gigantic tears and trying to keep his throat from closing completely because of the knot in it. His face is tear streaked and his eyelashes are all clumped together.
"What's the matter, boy?" I ask.
He takes a deep breath and tries to talk but here comes that knot in his throat again. He swallows and opens his mouth to speak again when the corners of his mouth start to droop, his eyebrows narrow and crinkles begin to form on his frowning little chin. He puts his thumb and forefinger on his eyelids and pushes hard trying to prevent the tears from escaping and says to me in a tight shrill voice, "My Hip Hop respired!"
"It what?" I asked, unsure of exactly what he said.
"It respired!" he repeated.
lol.
I hugged my broken-hearted little man and explained that his froggie didn't expire or die but his website is just no longer running.
"But his eyeballs are scratched", he recanted at me through hiccupped breaths. (I'm assuming he was making the association that because of Hip Hop's scratched eyeballs, the Corporate Headquarters/Webkinz Wizard must have decided to "respire" him).
I totally flashed back to the Velveteen rabbit that I watched as a kid.
"That's what your stuffed animals like, buddy. That's how they know someone has loved them."
He nodded and a slight glint of happiness came back into his salt watery eyes.

So, I just want to know if the people at Webkinz World ever thought that it might be a cruel joke to give kids stuffed toys with websites that unknowingly expire in about a year? I wonder if they know how many broken-hearted little boys and girls there are out in the world because they woke up one morning and BAM! their best friend no longer has a personality on the web? I had no idea that's what happened and had I known I probably would have thought twice before buying the dumb thing. I don't know about you, but I was quite attached to my stuffed dolls as a little girl. Garrett's over it now but, man! Talk about the drama at our house for 2 days. Everywhere we went Garrett had to tell people about how his Webkinz "respired".
It's funny now, though.


Hip Hop Mason:
Adopted: March 10th, 2008
Respired: March 10th, 2009