Yes, the allusion to “bear” is the giveaway. As for guinea pig, that’s a slang term from back home in the late '80s.

You see, I was born and grew up on the western side of urban Pennsylvania — back then, most of my time was spent hanging out at the local school’s playground. Frequently, we’d play basketball, except this one time that two hoodlums beat me up. My mom got so scared from this that she sent me out to California to live with her sister and brother-in-law.