The naughty bear

A small fluster at the Junction – an intellectually disabled man has dropped a toy bear in the pit and staff rally round quickly to rescue it with the station’s claw thing and prevent him from going onto the busy tracks after it.

This particular man is always carrying a toy.  It’s so odd because he has such a scary-looking face, crossed eyes and jagged teeth, the sort of face that would have drawn stones and jeers in a less enlightened time.  From the way he walks, I suspect he’s visually disabled as well. Yet he looks clean and well-cared for and seems happy in his own world and the companionship of his toy. If you talk to him he doesn’t answer. Perhaps he can’t hear.

It’s clearly a rather naughty bear. He holds it to his ear and listens to it and then he turns it over and smacks its bottom.  He does it again and again. Sometimes the bear is obviously very naughty and he puts it on the ground and turns his back on it.  I suspect was how it wound up on the tracks.

What I wonder is this – is this just some game with a toy or behavior he learned from his own childhood?