Friday, March 26, 2021
Toy Story
My parents took great pains to not spoil me and my sister when we were kids. While some of our friends were inundated with My Little Ponies and Transformers, we were generally steered towards more educational toys, like board games where you talk about your feelings and answer questions about history's notable lesbians or construction sets designed to avoid any masculine gaze. I am not complaining about this; I recall many wonderful hours spent assembling and disassembling my world map puzzle that had tragically been rendered inaccurate almost immediately by the collapse of the Soviet Union. But what I do find interesting is that this policy ascetism for tots has been utterly abandoned for the next generation, as my sister's children find themselves waist deep in Lego sets and princess costumes from their Mimi. I'm not saying the children will start torturing cats in the woods or anything because this is happening. If anything, I'm just jealous. And by the way, I would still accept a solid Lego set today.
Another fascinating aspect of this (I'm really a sociologist at heart, you see) is that somehow my mother generally leaves the most disruptive and/or dangerous toys for the children at my house. So while the books about fire safety and math games were A-OK to go live in the suburbs with the kids, somehow the game that involves sending dozens of tiny marbles down elaborate chutes children are actually not so capable of properly assembling stays with me. The toy medical bag leaves my home, but the Hungry, Hungry, Hippos clack and clatter away in my dining room. And the game that exists solely so that children can cause a buzzer to go off repeatedly while attempting to choke themselves on tiny plastic parts, Operation, is a permanent resident of my homestead. I guess I should just be glad my mother hasn't found a children's game that belches fire?
The children's passion for things that could potentially hurt them may win the day for me, though. The other day, my nephew spent dinner time asking us all questions, like a smaller, smarter Barbara Walters. "Why do people get married?" he asked my sister, echoing the thoughts of generations. Then he turned to me, and asked the most pressing question he could muster: "Why do you have Mousetrap at your house?"
I answered most diplomatically that he had so many toys at his house that we thought it would be nice for him to have some to play with at our house. Undeterred, he responded by asking, "But couldn't you just bring Moustrap to my house?"
Indeed I could, Jack. Indeed I could.
