Friday, September 28, 2007

Nostalgia

Now that I've got a wee tot myself, I've been going through the memory banks and trying to remember the things I liked when I was his age. I'm having trouble with it, because he's 2, but I do have a couple of memories that I can draw from. I had a plush zebra that I slept with incessantly, among other things. Painter has a donkey. I remember my parents both had really big paychecks come in one year, when I was 4, and we had a gigantic Christmas. It was the one year wherein they decided to officially spoil us, even once. Out of the huge medly of toys I received that year, two stand out. These are the greatest toys ever made. No matter what toys you liked when you were a kid, these beat those toys up all day long.

The Speak & Spell is pretty obvious. I played with mine from the age of 4 until 8. I rigged it to alternate power sources, I toted it everywhere. It is no wonder I later became a writer. I spent my childhood staying inside and spelling shit all day.




The only difference is that my Godzilla figure shot its fist off with eye-blacking power, and his other hand was replaced with red missiles that were best launched with a trajectory leading them to my toddler brother's head. I have no idea why this toy had rockets for one hand, or what sort of bizarre marketing that was, but I loved the thing.

Painter plays with Hot Wheels cars. That's his thing, for now. We've got a thousand, at this point.

And when he falls asleep, I play with the Hot Wheels cars.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Another humiliating story but when your dad would put on the song "GODZILLA" you would dance around in your footed jammies and pretend you were "GODZILLA" ... arn't you glad you have me... your one and only aunt to remember all of these fun things.... I have more....... :-)