This is the Fisher Price Happy Apple, and it's the greatest thing in the world. It's big, red, virtually indestructible, plays music when you bump it around, is weighted on the bottom so it always rolls back right-side up, and it's the only toy on the face of the planet that looks at you the same way your dog does when you walk in the door, whether you were gone five minutes or two weeks.
How can you not love that?
When I was little kid, this was my favorite thing. I mean, you could do anything to it and no matter what, it rolled back around and looked at you with those big, happy eyes as if to say, "That was fun, let's play some more!"
Even if you got in trouble and your parents wanted nothing to do with you for a little while, Happy Apple didn't care. Happy Apple just wanted you to roll it around and shake it so it could play its little chime music. And when you put it away because it was time to go to bed, or some other toy caught your attention for a while, that was OK too: Happy Apple was so happy to be your Happy Apple it was content to sit in the toy box for a few hours or a few days, because it knew, deep down, you could never leave it alone for too long, and soon it would be making music and rolling around and making you laugh again.
In my life with , I strive always to be her Happy Apple. No matter how her day has been, no matter what she's been through, no matter what the world says or does to her, I want her to come home and see me the way I saw my Happy Apple: unconditionally loving her for who she is, not caring what the rest of the world thought or did or said, knowing even when she gets mad or the universe bumps us around, I'll always roll back upright, wobble myself steady, and look at her with that expression of utter bliss that says, "I love you no matter what--let's play!"
Because I'm human, I don't always succeed. Because I'm human, I'm not perfect like the Happy Apple. I don't always have a playful twinkle in my eye or a grand smile on my face. I don't always have the energy to "chime". Sometimes I have bad days where it feels like my smile's been sanded off, my leaves are bent and broken, and my chimes play off-key. Some days it's harder to bounce back up, despite a level of weight in my gluteus maximus sufficient to make any personal trainer re-think his life.
But even on those days, the hardest days, she never gives up on me.
Happy Apple never gave up on me when I needed him either.
I guess what I'm rambling on trying to say here is that if you have the chance, if you have the opportunity, to be someone else's Happy Apple, don't be afraid to take it. Life will roll you around, but if your response to that is to chime your chimes and wobble your way upright again, you'll inspire more people than an 80's super group power ballad against world hunger.
One caveat: be the original Happy Apple from the 1970s. The day-glo abomination Fisher Price calls "Laugh and Learn Learning Happy Apple" today is a crime against childhood. There is only one Happy Apple.
This is not it.
Accept no substitutes. O.G. Happy Apple or bust, bitches.