The Origin Of Wide Bear

 Wide Bear was created in 1993 in my 6th grade social studies class when I decided to draw a bear-like thing that spanned the entire length of a piece of notebook paper.  I added a speech balloon saying "I wish I sounded like Shredder", an homage to the Ninja Turtles' gravelly-voiced arch nemesis.  This fateful picture later spawned other "I wish" jokes such as "I wish I was crammed in a jar" and "I wish I was trapped in the bathtub".

Wide Bear soon gained a cult following among my pre-pubescent peers, owing to the fact that he was a communal character - anyone could make a crude drawing of him in class and make up their own I-wish jokes.

Word of mouth spread quickly, and by the end of that year, Wide Bear was poised to become the next big thing.  Video games had been declining in popularity ever since Atari, and people were sick of hearing about David Koresh and the Branch Davidian mishap.  It seemed the world was ready for something new, and like a page from a fairy tale, Wide Bear triumphantly won the hearts and minds of the nation and rekindled a long-lost sense of national pride.
 

In 1994, I was approached by Walt Disney studios to make a full-width Wide Bear feature film, tentatively titled "The Widest Bear".  But shortly after signing on for the project, it became clear to me that Disney and myself were not seeing eye to eye on the concept of Wide Bear.  Without consulting me, their writers had created a back-story of a young Wide Bear who gets picked on as a cub for being so wide, but later goes on to redeem himself by saving the forest.  To make matters worse, their script featured no I-wish jokes at all.  Needless to say, I was forced to abandon the project the following year, citing creative differences.

In 1998, NASA briefly considered using Wide Bear as an inexpensive way to entertain astronauts on long voyages.  There was also talk of modeling the space suit after Wide Bear's body as an efficient way to conserve heat and store bodily waste.  Unfortunately, none of these ideas made it past the prototype stage, and the concept of Wide Bear sank back into obscurity.

It wasn't until 2001 that Wide Bear enjoyed a brief resurgence in popularity as Apple proudly introduced the iWish, a portable audio device capable of storing up to 70,000 I-wish jokes.  However, most people began using the iWish to store music instead, so Apple quietly changed the name to iPod, and to this day still denies that it was ever called anything else.

Critics have dismissed Wide Bear as just a hyper-obese, mentally retarded version of Winnie the Pooh, but apologists say they are missing the point.  The point is, Wide Bear is a lovable misfit who naively wishes for things that no sane person would ever wish upon themselves, and therein lies his immutable charm.

What will Wide Bear say next?  Kids, have an adult cut out this page so you can fill in your own I-wish jokes!