Christopher Robin (person)

Pooh, promise you won't forget about me ever. Not even when I'm a hundred." ---A. A. Milne's The House At Pooh Corner

Christopher Robin Milne was almost 76, not 100, when he died in England in 1996. But Pooh, the bear of Very Little Brain, lives on.

"How do you do Nothing", asked Pooh, after he had wondered for a long time.
"Well, it's when people call out to you just as you're going off to do it, What are you going to do, Christopher Robin, and you say, Oh, nothing, and then you go and do it."
"Oh, I see," said Pooh.

I can't even begin to tell you how that particular passage inspired my own life. Doing Nothing should be a national pastime. And Doing Nothing with someone you love; such as your friends, or children; should be mandatory. Can you imagine how your life would change if you spent just twenty mintues a week with your stuffed bear?

Christopher Robin was going away. Nobody knew why he was going; nobody knew where he was going; indeed, nobody even knew why he knew Christopher Robin was going away. But somehow or other everybody in the Forest felt it was happening at last.

So Rabbit calls a meeting of all the Forest residents, and Eeyore reads a poem he has composed to give to Christopher Robin.

"Hitherto, as I was saying, all the Poetry in the Forest has been written by Pooh, a Bear with a Pleasing Manner but a Positively Startling Lack of Brain. The Poem which I am now about to read to you was written by Eeyore, or Myself, in a Quiet Moment...I call it--POEM!

'Christopher Robin, good-bye.
I And all your friends sends
I mean all you friend send
Well, anyhow,
we send
Our love.
END.'

"If anybody wants to clap," said Eeyore when he had read this, "now is the time to do it."

I first read the above passage from a newspaper obituary of Christopher Robin Milne. I cried for two days. My husband thought that I had lost my mind. (Perhaps I had!)

The truth of the matter is that it would be difficult to find anyone who grew up in the last 80 years who has not been touched in some way by A. A. Milne and his son, Christopher Robin; real or imaginary. Winnie the Pooh has been published in 32 languages and sold in over 100 countries.

In the 1960s, Walt Disney fashioned the characters over for the movies. Instead of the thin lines and pale colors of the books, the friends of Christopher Robin, and Christopher Robin himself; became rounder and more brightly colored, to draw the attention of regular Disney patrons. It, also, was a roaring success.

Some of my earliest memories are of clutching my toy Pooh to my chest as my mom read to me of his adventures. I would fall asleep dreaming of the Forest, and living under the name Sanders, just like Pooh.