Flashback: Playthings

I remember the neighbor kids’ toys better than I remember my own, which makes this week’s flashback…different.

Prompt: What toys do you remember from your childhood? … Did you have to “get permission” to play at a friend’s house, or were you and your friends back and forth between houses all the time? … What were the “fad” or “must-have” toys of your generation? Did you parents buy them? Was there a toy you always wanted and never got to have?

Don’t get me wrong. My family had plenty of toys. We had duplos and legos and tinker toys and waffle blocks and lincoln logs and dolls. Mostly imaginative toys, building toys, things that we children played with together, inventing dozens of things.

But what I remember most is our friends’ toys. We had a neighbor who we played with on occasion. She and her siblings had a whole room that was positively stuffed with toys. She had all the toys we didn’t. My Little Pony. Barbies. Cabbage Patch Dolls. Her brother had GI Joes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Transformers. The little sister had all sorts of big name children’s stuff (that I didn’t pay much attention to.) The room was absolutely stuffed with toys. When all the toys were in use, the room was literally knee deep in toys–all the toys the kids of my generation were clamoring over.

And mostly, I pitied my friend.

She had a room stuffed with all the best toys the world had to offer–but she played with them all alone.

Her brother was older and he played with his toys. Her sister was younger, she played with her toys. Her parents worked in a factory and were either gone at work or sleeping whenever the kids were at home.

She had all the playTHINGS a child could want–but none of the playMATES I treasured.

I had toys, yes–but they aren’t what I remember. What I remember is taking bicycle rides with the whole family to the park across the railroad tracks. I remember us kids making dashed lines and solid lines along the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk–and enforcing the passing rules. I remember making a doll stroller out of Tinkertoys with my sister. I remember the “tent” mom made us kids out of scraps of fabric. We spent hours under that table draped with its tent, lowering and raising the window flaps, pretending to be explorers or pioneers or even just homemakers.

She had a roomful of toys to play with. I had a houseful of people to play with.

My lot was certainly the better one.

Visit Linda and follow the links to hear other people’s toy memories.