Coming Straight Outta Storage!
My mom saved everything from my childhood. And when I say everything, I mean all the artwork, all the pictures, all the costumes, all the books, all the programs from countless school productions, all the cards, be they of a greeting or a reporting nature, and of course all the toys. She lives a few hours away and comes to visit us on a semi-regular basis, and on many of these visits, she’s brought along some of the toys that were mine when I was a little boy. Technically, I suppose they still are mine, though I guess I sort of relinquished ownership when I left them behind in the free storage unit that is my mom’s house.
I'm always happy to see these old friends of mine, a feeling that's followed by an eagerness to show them to my boys and show them how they work and all the cool stuff they can do with them. Their reactions, though, have been mixed. Below are a few of the more notable examples.
Hot Wheels Cars
My boys already have an assload of these things, many of which have little faces on them thanks to a certain merchandise-centric Pixar feature. None of mine have faces and some of them are pretty scratched up, but they were otherwise still in pretty good shape. But the most exciting pieces of this collection were the Key Cars.
Remember these things? You shove a plastic key into a hole in the back, give the key a squeeze, and a spring fires the car across the floor. As you can see, I even had Magnum's ferrari. Now there was a guy who knew who to celebrate Movember.
My Reaction: Cars seemed a lot cooler before I started having to drive every day.
Boys’ Reactions: They welcomed these senior members of the Hot Wheels community into their collection with open arms.
Lincoln Logs
We all know these things. Logs with grooves that you can use to make cabins.
My Reaction: I don’t remember playing with these very much.
Boys’ Reactions: I don’t think they’ve noticed them.
Connecty Block Things
Does anyone know what these are actually called? All’s I know is they’re plastic blocks with comb teeth things all over them that allows them to stick together.
My Reaction: I seem to recall playing with these all the time, but I don’t remember what I built.
Boys’ Reactions: Eh, they aight. The youngest digs them okay, but as far as the eldest is concerned, they pale in comparison to the constructive power of....
LEGOS!
Such a simple and powerful idea -- universally connectible blocks of many shapes, sizes and colors that you can use to build damn near anything.
When my mom first arrived with these, she had them all organized by size and color. Upon further consideration, the boys adopted this organizational model:
Not only did she save the pieces themselves, but she also saved my old instruction booklets. Now of course, I understand the joy of building freely from scratch, but there’s also a great satisfaction to be found in seeing a picture of a completed product, and then building it from the ground up.
My Reaction: I remember hours spent playing with these things, both alone and with my friends. I remember weathering the outage of Hurricane Alicia in 1983 playing with my Legos in the gray light of our house, waiting for the water and electricity to come back on.
Boys’ Reactions: My eldest has discovered new depths of life’s meaning in these things. He’ll spend hours poring over instructions, counting the number of bumps on pieces to find the right one, carefully fitting piece after piece together until he finally arrives at a finished product. It’s been amazing to watch his progress. For my part, I’ve enjoyed helping him out, but it’s a challenge to sit back and let him do most of the work. My youngest, unfortunately, is more about destruction than construction at this point in his life, so his interests tend to run contrary to his brother’s.
Mighty Man And Monster Maker
Remember these things? They had a bunch of different plates with different faces, torsos, and legs that you could put together to make all manner of fantastical humanoid creations.
My Reaction: I LOVED this thing. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to sit down with a stack of paper and get to making.
Boy’s Reactions: The eldest busts it out every couple weeks or so and makes a few pictures, then much too soon, it's back in the closet. “But, but,” I sputter, “there’s so many more mighty men and monsters you could make!” But he’s already back to his Legos. Which, you know, cool.
Anyway, thanks Mom!
