You want to know a quick formula for feeling old? Go to a museum and see some of your childhood toys on display. My folks have a bunch of stuff in the local library’s seasonal exhibit of “Timeless Toys.” Some of it is stuff of theirs, some of mine and some used to belong to my grandpa.
This was his little toy horse on wheels. We’ve got a photo of him at age six playing with this. We’ve got another one from the same era showing the huge spreading elm trees on the farm…
Here’s a couple more sets of timeless toys. Marbles are always good for a laugh. Especially when you combine them with roller skates. Nothing says fun like small round objects underfoot.
And now we start getting into the toys from my own childhood. This wagon spent a lot of time on its side in the front yard, having just deposited a load of kids who had ridden it down the hill from the top of the block. I still remember the slowly accelerating “badump-batunk” of the sidewalk seams underneath the wheels as we headed toward our rendezvous with landscaping.
Stylin’ chapeau, eh? The really cool thing was that this had a little microphone and speaker powered by four AA batteries in the top of the helmet. Every kid should have their own personal amplifier.
And then there’s this damn game. I hated Candyland. I don’t know if this was the copy we had when I was growing up, but just seeing the little Neapolitan ice cream floats and the little Aryan kids charging off toward the Gumdrop Mountains and the rest of the landscape of insulin shock and dental decay brought all the horrible memories back…
And this is just plain wrong:
“I pity da fool what make Strawberry Shortcake four times my size!”