4 more TOYS

for many people, a conversation about toys that continues for days or weeks might exhaust itself eventually. not this girl. floods of memories (almost all of them wonderful) rush through my mind with every 80s product name. it takes me back. and sometimes one just wants to go back, am i lying?

what child on south 22nd street didn't have a Big Wheel? i can't remember if there was a hand brake or if it was one of those brilliant "backpedal" braking systems, but anyone who rode a big wheel as a child could never forget that sound. the hard black molded plastic tires scraping against the pavement, sometimes leaving tiny black shards of evidence that a cool kid has been here. buildings should be constructed out of this stuff, it was so hard and durable. withstanding even the older brothers on the block and all of the deviant things they did to our toys. the seams of the tires weren't that impressive though. inevitably after summers of three-wheeling, street-scraping joy, the seams that ran down the center of the otherwise kryptonic tires would split and the unsuspecting child would be left with 2 halves of a tire--this considerably compromised the integrity of the tire. it also dramatically changed the ride. no more spinning out, no more brake-slamming, just wobble wobble wobble down the sidewalk-the orange plastic underbody scraping pathetically every few yards. time to beg mom and dad for a green machine! this beast rocked! it had levers. i don't remember if the levers provided forward motion or brakes or if they were totally futile and we were too young to care. but there were levers! functional, cosmetic, whatever...levers!

now i want to talk about Spirograph. even dumb kids who couldn't write their names came out looking like artists with this little contraption. colors patterns sizes... spirograph had it all! it was a self-esteem boost for untalented children unseen since the introduction of light brite. follow the pattern, do as the instructions tell you and you too can make something beautiful! and our poor parents! MOMMY MOMMY! LOOK WHAT I DREW! bullshit. i put a pen in a hole and a primitive gear-like system did the rest. but every damn time my parents had to look delighted and tell me how pretty it was. how many parents had this shit on their fridge for years? do you think that when parents visited each other's homes and saw spirograph "drawings" on the fridge it sent an immediate message: "this woman's child has no talent." especially if it was one of the "drawings" that didn't even include two colors. (on the box there were pictures of very elaborate spiros with two, even three different colors making a beautiful pattern. i can't remember if i was ever able to do that. let's just say that i could.) one must think that if a child ever drew a real picture or painted something pretty or even interesting, THAT masterpiece would have replaced the spirograph crap on the fridge. other parents know this. but honestly...who ever had the dexterity to make the triangle thing work? not here.


pogo balls. my body reacts to the very name. i loved this thing...mine was a bright green ball with a purple platform. i bounced for days on the pogo ball. but ouch. the whole concept was that you had to hold onto the ball between your feet in order to "take flight" on the upward thrust. this looks easier than it is. there is a muscle system in the inner thigh that anyone who has never owned a pogo ball does not even know about. i didn't know what kind of muscle retraction was required to hold something between one's feet until i first started jumping. i think i might still walk funny as a result of this toy. but what a workout. if i could find one now, i would totally buy it. it found muscles to abuse that even the thighmaster didn't recognize. the other significant memory i have attached to the pogo ball is this: i had some anxiety as a child. i worried about a lot of things. some rational, some not so rational. i am not sure which category this fear falls into. when i would jump around on my ball, i could not get the image out of my head that on one of my landings the bottom half of the ball (under the platform) would explode from the pressure and my legs would shatter from the impact. so jump jump jump, worry worry worry. i never could stop thinking about that. in fact, when i first remembered the pogo ball the other day, my heart rate quickened a bit and the shattering legs image was right there. lingering.

for a child with anxiety, this most random toy memory creates all kinds of body-response. the water wizard. one of the strangest toys ever. i truly thought that my house was the only place these things existed, but my colleagues confirmed for me last week that they were everywhere. a tiny aquarium like apparatus with little colorful balls or rings and a white rubber button. push the button, it creates a water current to propel the rings/balls through the water. the goal was to try to make the little toys land on some specific part of the aquarium. on a stick, in a little hole... whatever. there were two very significant problems witht this thing, as i see it. first of all. they were floating through water. water that is locked inside the plastic aquarium. the player had virtually NO power to affect the outcome of their travels. and more significantly for this girl. they moved soooooooooo slooowwwwwwwwwlllllyyyyyyyy...it was like 10 minutes before you knew if you were successful. and even if you were, which almost never happened..as i said, how successful could you really feel? you couldn't control this damn thing. also. it didn't matter how hard you pushed that fucking button. they were not moving any faster. it was identical to the feeling that i get now when i am forced to work on a computer without high-speed access. ggggggggggrrrrrrrrrr. we had a bunch of these water toys. i am quite sure that i pushed the little white button right through all of them. i hate that toy. but i really want to buy one. is that weird?