My Favorite Toy...

(I would have responded to this days and days ago but I couldn't figure out what my password was!)

Like Julie, I was also poor when I was little, but also blissfully unaware. My favorite toy when I was a child was my imagination.

While anything related to horses enamoured me, and anything small with wheels was fun to roll around, what fascinated me more was that those little toy horses were an intricate family and had herd issues as they galloped over the plains of the kitchen floor. My little Garfield in a jeep (one of the best McDonald's toys EVAR!), with its reliable 4x4 system, could easily tackle the rocks, hills, and valleys created by the blankets on my bed.

I also spent a lot of time outside. Though I can appreciate the convenience of living in a city, I have always been a country girl--and one of my favorite cartoons was David the Gnome. Oh, how I loved going out into the forest--or even simply into our front yard!--to climb trees, "talk" to animals and nature, and explore all the great world has to offer (or at least "all" that a small, shy girl can get to).

I am 30 now, and my imagination is still my favorite toy. I write and create art. I imagine ways to decorate my living space. And on some days, I still find shapes in the clouds and hear the trees whispering to me.

My favorite toy...

I loved my legos. I would spend hours just quietly building, tearing apart, and rebuilding, even up into my early teen years. Legos are the perfect toy for an overly imaginative child.

Favorite Toy

We were kind of poor when I was little… government cheese, shopping at thrift stores for new school clothes, health department doctors and dentists… the whole bit. Fortunately, I was a very happy child, blissfully unaware of what we didn’t have. I remember Christmas mornings very clearly. We were fortunate enough to get actual presents, but stockings were a different story. Our stockings were actually Dad’s old tube socks that Santa would fill with apples, oranges, rolls of pennies, packs of Wrigley’s gum, and various other cheap gifts, and I can still remember the joy of turning that sock upside down and feeling the contents slide out against the cloth underneath my hand, and being inordinately happy to have, all to myself, those things that were usually kept in the kitchen and shared.

So, obviously, you won’t expect me to say that my favorite toy was my pricey princess power wheels car (how's that for alliteration?) or my shiny blue huffy bike with streamers or my red ryder bb gun. In fact, I actually don’t remember getting any one toy that I was just nuts about. The thing that stands out most in my mind is being in third grade and getting a wonderfully, beautifully, inspirationally blank hardback book. It was all white. White cover, white binding, white pages with no restrictive lines. I was thrilled beyond belief. The options were almost crippling. I fantasized for months about what to do with this book. Journal?—too risky. Sketchbook?—too informal. Book?—perfect, of course. So I agonized for a few more months about what to write, until I finally decided that I would just set the book aside and save for a really (really) great idea.

I eventually did write a children’s book and had a friend of mine illustrate it for me. It was a lovely process. But I think I had that blank book for several years before actually taking action. I’m sure there’s potential there for some meaningful life metaphor… something about indecision or potential or something. But I’ll keep my theories to myself and leave some room for your own psychoanalysis.

What I do know is that there is still nothing quite as satisfying as a fresh, blank notebook, a smooth ball point pen, and a mind swirling with ideas.

My favorite toy was..

my lion. It really wasn't a toy but more of a security "blankie." Truthfully, I cannot remember a toy that I ever received that really excited me. Well, except my BOB, but that is another story entirely! It was the one stuffed animal that I protected with my life. My mother actually received this lion on my behalf during her baby shower. Yes, that means my lion is creeping up on 31 years of age!

My lion and I have been through many difficult times over the years. I would swing him by his tail like a helicopter, and during one of his "flights," he lost an eye--never to be found again. :( My sisters would make fun of my lion, saying that I was too old to have a stuffed animal. Little did I know that they each had their own! My eldest sister, Jen, still has her teddy bear (he is totally blind--lost both eyes). Her teddy is rounding the bend to 37 years of age!

Although Jen and I are closest out of all three of my sisters, she was the one that tormented me the most. Some time during elementary, I decided I no longer needed my lion. I got the kitchen scissors and proceeded to cut him up into pieces. I laid him down nicely on the top of the trash can and walked away. When my mom came home from work she became hysterical. I think my sister caught a beat-down that she deserved! hehehehe. (Side note: Our beat-downs came in the form of wooden spoons and/or the almighty fly swatter!)

Perhaps needless to say, my mother came to my lion's rescue and sewed him up. I was very happy to have him back, even if he had "stitches" of every color of the rainbow. He now resides in my sock drawer, scented by fabric softener sheets. I see him every morning, or at least the mornings I choose to put clean socks on! ha! My lion is so disfigured, my grandpa has called him a squirrel for many, many years. It used to make me very angry. Over the years, I have gained confidence in my self and the fact that I openly love my lion-squirrel.

My Favorite Toy as a Child

One Christmas, 1978, perhaps, I received my first art studio--well, actually, a yellow-plastic Crayola turntable. This glorious artistic wheel held a tower of 64 crayons,  8 markers, 16 color pencils, 8 water colors, and 3 paint jars in primary colors. Paper not included. Paired with the Spirograph that year, the world was at my finger tips . . .

What was your favorite toy as a child?