What You Never Got For Christmas

Another Christmas has passed, and so in retrospect, I wanted to leave you with my thoughts on gift giving and the meaning of Christmas, at least for me. I've always tried to give gifts I felt challenged my kids and at the same time, kept them interacting with their environments.

When I was a kid, I wanted a microscope. Not the toy ones where you can magnify things up to 5 times. I wanted the one where you can see the bacteria in your spit or the actual construct of a booger. Call me gross, but I had the mind of a future genius. All gone to waste because I didn't get the things I so desperately desired, aside from the Casper mask and other favorite toys. So I’m over-dramatizing.

Anything which inspired me was a no go. No Play Doh for Diane! 

No, she cannot have that paint set, that goop factory, or that chemistry lab. Instead, she can have this Barbie doll and the doll whose hair you pull from a hole at the top of its head to make the strands "grow" or at least appear to.

  

"Look!" My mom would say. "Her hair grew!" 

No, it didn't. You pulled it out from inside her head.

Push the button on her belly or turn the knob on her back, and miraculously the hair disappears into the void from whence it came. I once tried to cut open my doll to see how that worked, but my mom caught me. I recall that horrified look on her face and the several days of concern and careful observation, until she came to realize I wasn't turning into a psychopath.

No matter how messed up and tangled my Barbie's hair ever got, my parents would buy another one the next Christmas, or for my birthday. Wasn't it obvious I didn't care about my dolls? Seriously.

They always ended up at the bottom of the toy box, headless and missing one or more appendages. I didn't do it on purpose. They just got stuck between other toys and when yanked out from underneath, while looking for something more important, this was the resulting evolution of the doll. Not all girls play with Barbie.

I imagine where my life would be today had I gotten the microscope. Instead, I got the Spirograph. Remember that beast? I could never get the pens to fit nicely into most of the holes. And in order to make any of the really cool shapes, you'd spend hours spinning the gear, keeping it from jumping track. All the while, your pen bends profusely just before it snaps in half.

Maybe I've just grown bitter that I didn't get all those other things I so wanted when I was a kid. I could get them for myself today, but I'm too old and not as curious as when I was a kid. Keep those minds fed and those passions of your children aflame. 

If your kids make out a list to Santa which contains a questionable item, be sure it's not an absolute NO before you have a moment to reflect. Why does your child want that particular thing and why is it not something you would consider?

It was too expensive 

(the microscope)

It was too messy 

(the finger-paints)

It was too dangerous 

(the pump BB gun)

It was too risque

(the albino rat snake as a pet -  in Japan, those things were protected by law)

Is there anything you ever wanted for Christmas (or any other occasion) that you never got?

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5 Favorite Childhood Toys - Remember These?

I'm taking a short break to enjoy some memories of my favorite childhood toys. I did this with favorite books not long ago, because not only do our memories of books shape who we are, but they also influence how we develop our characters and how they feel about the world around them. Your toys do the same. Here are five of my favorite childhood toys.


Creepy Crawlers (no wonder I'm a King fan)

There was the machine where you baked these hard, rubber squares in an incubator of sorts and you would watch this creature unfold. It could be a spider, a scorpion, or snake. I can't remember what it was called. When all your creatures were fully formed, you'd then have to shove them into this gadget and turn a crank in order to press them back into squares.

Something similar came out years later. I got my son the Creepy Crawlers for Christmas to disguise the fact I wanted it for myself. New technology meets bug making fun. You would squeeze this gooey ooze into molds in order to make your creatures, and the mold would "set" and form solid, rubbery bugs. It was so cool.


Nesting Dolls

My absolute favorite toy was Nesting Dolls. When I think about these dolls, I realize that my O.C.D. was present even back when I was four and five years old. I remember one of the smaller dolls had gotten lost. The whole toy was ruined! Devastation!  My mom put all the dolls back inside to show me everything was fine and that the doll still "looked" the same. But it wasn't the same.

You don't truly understand the meaning of void, not until you've been through this sort of trauma. At such a young age, to have an adult explain to you that everything is fine (when you know they are full of shit) is even more traumatic. Why? Because now you realize you don't even have an advocate who understands and empathizes with your problem. I don't have to see that it's not there. I KNOW it's not there. Don't treat me like a dummy!


Rock Em Sock Em Robots

First, let me just say, here is another example where I was always the blue and my sister was the red. She was the first girl and I was the second, so Sis got all the pink stuff. My parents created this policy so as to not get our stuff mixed up. I would get blue, or one of the neutral colors like green or yellow. The only time I ever got to be the red robot was when I was playing against my dad.

I'm telling you, if children were able to bring a law suit against their parents at such a young age, I'd have sued my parents for discrimination. No lie!


Shape O Ball 

This never went out of style for young kids. I had mine for years. I was pretty good at it from the very beginning. After I knew all the shapes, I would further challenge myself with timed, stress tests. I'm never one to leave myself bored with old toys. This was another reason this toy stuck around for so long, until I became obsessed with numbers and started writing them out as described in this blog article.

Casper Mask

Even when it wasn't Halloween, I would always search for my Casper mask. The plastic masks were very durable back then. I'd keep them for months after the All Hollow's Eve. Whenever the stretchy string that went around my head to hold the mask in place would break, mom stapled it back on. The only thing she couldn't fix was when the plastic edge of the mask would get a small crack in it. There's no fixing plastic cracks, I know.

She put scotch tape on the crack, but that didn't help. Much like the missing nested doll, you knew it was broke, and with time, the crack in the plastic gets bigger and bigger, until it splits into the open eye or mouth areas. Then, it's no longer a mask.

Thank goodness there was always a month or so before the next Halloween. Mom would then buy me another Casper mask.

What were some of your favorite childhood toys?