Weekend Assignment #360: Old Toy

Weekend Assignment #360: Toy Show
Do you have any old toys or dolls from your childhood, either the originals or replacements purchased as an adult? If so, tell us about them.

Extra Credit: Is there a particular toy from your childhood that you especially remember as a favorite?

Yes, I'm late in answering, but give me a break. Last weekend I worked six days, followed by the toy show on Sunday, followed by my usual Sunday errands - well, some of them. Then came the new work week, complete with my 40 miles each way commute. Yesterday I worked at both jobs, followed by Ash Wednesday mass in the evening. Then today was my birthday, which included the usual commute, an eight-hour work day, and then coming home to discover my monitor had mysteriously gone dark. A trip to Staples just as mysteriously resulted in it working again, but now I've got a hub that isn't functioning. Arrgh. Then was the birthday dinner at Kon Tiki, and here I am. Point is, I'm a busy beaver these days, and still not over my bronchitis. Is it any wonder I'm a bit distracted?

So, anyway.

I do have exactly one toy that I owned when I was six. You've seen him before, and I'm not exactly sure where he is at the moment. But here's a file photo:

This is Trophy. He was a present from my godmother, Joan F., after I was formally baptized in the Catholic church at the age of six. Trophy arrived on a red plush pillow (not this one), which to my childish eyes made him look like some kind of a trophy.

I'm not sure Trophy was my favorite toy, but he's an integral part of my childhood. One time, a dog got hold of him and tore off part of one leg, but an aunt of mine sewed him back together. That was when I was staying with my dad's family in New Jersey. while my mom was in the hospital with polio-encephalitis. On later occasions I repaired him myself, restuffing him with tissues and I think Elmer's Glue.

Furthermore, Trophy was the first of a string of stuffed animals that I collected and hung onto until high school.  I remember the list, in order of acquisition: Trophy, Snoopy, Percy, Timmy, Toothy, Eeyore/Yonker, Pooh, Timothy. Snoopy was not the Peanuts dog, but a different Snoopy dog. Percy was a panda, Timmy a tiger. Toothy was, I insisted, a giroo (giraffe/kangaroo cross), not a green brontosaurus with leopard spots. Pooh I made myself out of an old coat lining. Timothy was a bear I bought myself once when I was a bit depressed.

I gave most of my stuffed animals to a younger next door neighbor during high school. His alcoholic mother promptly threw them away. Shame. I would gladly have taken them back. Then again, my dad would probably have innocently sold them at the infamous yard sale while I was out of town, the year of the divorce. But I still have Trophy, and I think Snoopy and Toothy. Somewhere.

Most of my other toys these days are replacements. I have at least one of every Barbie-related doll I had as a child, plus some that friends had.  I have a Bunson Bernie Kiddle, like the one my dad gave me circa 1965, and a Jan doll like the one my mom bought me in 1963. I even have a Fisher-Price toy radio that plays "Jack and Jill," like the one I had when I was four; and two Chatty Baby dolls like the one my parents gave me one Christmas instead of the Chatty Cathy I'd asked for.

It's silly, I know, but I enjoy getting back some of these well-remembered toys, even if they aren't the originals. John does the same. That's one reason we go to the annual toy show held every March in Tucson. Our collections are advanced enough these days that we seldom find anything that we owned once, want to own again, and haven't already gotten. But at Sunday's toy show I did spend $5 on a Hot Wheels case, not because I had one originally (I didn't), but to display my small collection of replacement Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars.

And John? He bought a dollar's worth of vintage bottle caps, and a couple of old comic books.

Karen

Round Robin: Memories of Childhood, Not All of Them Mine

Hi ho! This week's Round Robin Challenge: Childhood Memories, comes to us from Monica of the blog Shutterly Happy. Many of the exhibits here at Casa Blocher, the Museum of the Weird, are kid-related, and over the years I've shown you lots of them: my battered plush dog Trophy, John's Handy Andy bulldozer, my Barbies along with all their friends and relatives, Chatty Baby in two different hair colors and many more. This time out, let's skip over all of those and focus on other vintage items in our collection.

From the Picasa album Museum of the Weird

John has spent much more time on eBay than I have over the years, so let's take a look at a few items from his collection. The toy soldier in box is from the Marx "Warriors of the World" collection. The colorful plastic frogmen are powered by baking soda, and originally came in Kellogg's cereal boxes. The yellow dinosaur, as far as I know, is just a yellow dinosaur. The autographed baseball he got as an adult. Can you tell what famous Japanese player signed it?

This one is probably more universal for children of the 1950s and 1960s. Display space is at a premium here at the Museum of the Weird, so these Lincoln Logs are "on display" in John's office closet! My exposure to Lincoln Logs was mostly at Pebble Hill School in DeWitt, NY, where I spent the second half of kindergarten. We also had Mr. Machine! I always wanted one of those.

From the Picasa album Museum of the Weird

Let's move on to some of my childhood mementos. Like John, I've repurchased some stuff I had as a kid, having managed to hang onto very few of my original childhood things. But the china dog on the left has been with me since 1964 or 1965, when he arrived on a planter someone gave my mom. A few years later I appropriated him for my china animal collection. He's named Heather, after a dog my friend Cindy R. had before I knew her. He's been broken and glued back together, but what of it? The memories evoked by this battered relic are intact.

The mother raccoon with her cub are a repurchase. I used to buy bone china animals in sets of three, little family groupings glued onto a white card for display in the few stores that sold them. Originally they cost $3.00 per set, but got as high as $3.75 or even $4.00 by the time I stopped buying them. It took me a while to save up for them at 50 cents a week in allowance! The day I bought one such set at a store in Shoppingtown (DeWitt, NY), I found a $10 bill. The store owner hung onto it for me, and if nobody claimed it in 30 days I would get to keep it. And I did! I almost certainly spent it on china animals, or possibly plastic ones in the Britain's Limited zoo and farm animal collections.

The raccoon bone china grouping, to which the figure above belongs, I remember especially. I used a file to separate the baby raccoon from the mother's mouth, so that I would have an extra toy animal and more versatility for our games about the animals' adventures. I came to regret this, but it kinda worked!

This Peanuts lunchbox dates back to about 1964, when my friend Joel used to bring his lunch to school in it. I always loved that lunchbox, and when I happened to mention it to him some years back he sent it to me. His late mother had later used it as a paintbox, and it's clearly quite battered. But I don't care. Joel also had a great collection of Hungerford Peanuts figures back in the day, and a great Viewmaster collection.

And here we have two boys with hats! Bunsen Bernie Kiddle is the only doll I'll be showing you today. The kid in the picture is Jacob, my godson. I've only seen him on two occasions since his family moved to Los Alamos when he was a little boy, but his parents send me photos. He's 13 now, I think. So my memories of Jacob as a child are somewhat limited, but still precious.

From Family photos

Here are photographic memories that are barely mine at all. My mom had a copy of this portrait of her younger self (right) on her vanity when I was a kid. When I was a teenager she gave me this double frame with two pictures, one of her sister and one of her mother. I think the shot on the left here is the one of Aunt Flora. Flora M Johnson was an engineer who helped to design the Interstate Highways along the eastern corridor. I don't know the details, but I like to think that Route 81, which we took many times to visit Grandmother and Aunt Flora in Fairfax VA and sometimes in Florida, was partly her accomplishment.

What of the other portrait, the one of my grandmother, Flora D Johnson, nee Dufour, at one time Flora D Ballantine? If I don't have the two portraits mixed up, here she is on the right. I've had that photo buried under the Aunt Flora one for the past eight years or so, because, well, my mom is far more important to me. But let's let little Flora out for a while, in front of Flora-on-the-floral-couch!

Now let's see everyone else's childhood memories!


Linking List
(as of 6:45 PM PST 02/13/10)

Monica - Posted!
Shutterly Happy
http://monica-frameofmind.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Suzanne - Posted!
SuzyQ421's Photo Blog
http://suzyq421sphotoblog.blogspot.com

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Kara
Hip Chick Photo
http://hipchickphotos.blogspot.com

Linda
Mommy's Treasures
http://mommystreasures.blogspot.com

ellen b. - Posted!
The Happy Wonderer
http://happywonderer.wordpress.com

Nancy - Posted!
Nancy Luvs Pics
http://nancyluvspix.blogspot.com

Quiltworks - Posted!
World Through The Eyes Of A Fiber Artist
http://quilt--works.blogspot.com

Sandy - Posted!
From the Heart of Texas
http://sandytrefger.wordpress.com

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Ruth - Posted!
Scrabble Queen
http://scrabblequeen.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/childhood-memories/

If you like the Round Robin Challenges, please check our other memes. Click the logos to be redirected to this week's assignments:

The Weekend Assignment, 
hosted by Karen and Carly


This week: Weekend Assignment #306: 
What's the Name of Your Book?


- and -

The Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, hosted by Carly

This week: Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #77: The Cone Zone

See ya!

Karen

Duck!

The day started badly.

I had been up most of the night doing CPAexcel units on the subject of bankruptcy law, a somewhat depressing subject even if you have a good job and manageable debts. Obviously, I'm still working on the "good job" part. The units were due at midnight, but the computer-based grading system doesn't really care if you complete the assignment a little late. Just click a button that says "regrade" and all is copacetic. Even so, I didn't want to fall even further behind. I wanted to finish the entire section, but around 5 AM excessive sleepiness put an end ot that plan.

It would have been nice to sleep in a bit, but I awoke just after 10 AM and got up. I have an interview Thirsday morning for a part time bookkeeper/ accountant job at St. Michael's, for pay this time; and I needed to turn in the job application today. It was a PDF file, which I filled in by hand yesterday. My handwriting can at best be referred to as "somewhat readable," so John and I between us spent a few hours over the last day and a half trying to find a way to add my answers to the file as printed text. Saving each page as a jpg wasn't the most practical approach (or maybe it was), so John opened it in real Acrobat and tried to make it a fillable form. That would have been ideal, had it worked; but it didn't.

When I went to download the emailed edit of the file, I came across an ominous-looking email from the state unemployment service, something about my unemployment claim for last week. Uh-oh! Now what? When I tried to open the email, nothing happened. That's when the internet connection went down, completely and convincingly.

I spent the next hour booting John's computer, checking the modem, the router and various cables, and then playing with the job application file to see if I could find a way to add my data. No luck with any of it. I could add little comment boxes with red text, but that would do me no good.

Deprived of the internet, short of sleep, stymied by a program I should have been able to conquer, and even without a manila envelope in which to put the form as requested, I was not a happy camper. The unread email from the state almost certainly meant bad news, and I was annoyed that I'd have to turn in a messy, handwritten job application, undercutting my reputation at St. Michael's as a computer whiz. My pending job interview was starting to stress me out a little.

But I showered and dressed, put the application in the wrong kind of envelope and headed for a Hallmark shop and office supply store near the church. They had onesies for sale of manila envelopes in a variety of sizes, which I found within about a minute of an employee's friendly greeting at the door. As I went to pay for my envelope, I saw this little guy sitting near the register, waiting for a buyer:

Yeah, I know. I already have two rubber ducks. But he was very cute, and on sale for just fifty cents, and he's slightly shorter in length than my little finger. Besides, he can do this:

Can you see? He's got flashing red lights inside! I've named him Fester.

My brief visit to Plunkett's, with the friendly staff, the inexpensive envelope and the unexpected whimsy of a light-up rubber duck, marked the exact moment my day turned around completely. I dropped off my application in the right kind of envelope, and realized that nobody else cared that my info was handwritten. Furthermore, a St. Michael's volunteer told me that her Cox internet connection had also been down that morning, but had since come back up. I could stop worrying about equipment failure at my end of things, or prolonged internet deprivation.

When I got home, I opened the email from the state, and it was no big deal. Suddenly, after all these months, some human, computer or combination thereof has decided that it's a good idea to remind people to file their claim for the previous week if they don't jump on the task by 6 PM Monday, and warn them they'll be dropped unless they file by Friday. I filed on Tuesday and the system knows it. Everything is fine.

This afternoon I was at church again, doing the volunteer stuff, and early this evening the dogs and I went to the dog park as usual. I have to admit that after eight months, I'm getting a little bored with the place, and even the dogs are not enjoying the dog park itself as much as they used to. I took them around other areas of Reid Park, getting some exercise, amusing the dogs with interesting smells, and trying to prove to Pepper that the ferret she smelled at the concert was long gone. She should not expect to find ferrets in Reid Park. Yeah, sure - except tonight there was a couple near the performance center with a ferret on a leash! Fortunately I didn't let the dogs close enough to even know it was there. Ferrets! All in all, I prefer ducks. And so, of course, does Cayenne.

Karen

Round Robin: Heroic Toys

It's Round Robin time again, and this week we're doing "Favorite Toy" as the topic. Hey! That's one of mine! Now, what did I have in mind when I first suggested it? I've no idea. I do, however, have some toys to show you. After photographing some of them, I realized that several were hero-related. So that's my hook for this entry: heroic toys.

My sonic screwdriver, and the Doctor's.

From my Picasa album Round Robin Photo Challenges

First off, here's my actual current favorite toy. I've had it for a year or so, and it's still on my desk, in case I should need at at any moment. The "real" one on Doctor Who can unlock doors, light candles, repair barbed wire, increase the power of various devices and do lots of other marvelous but unlikely things. But what does mine do?

The sonic screwdriver in action!

Taa-dah! It lights up! It makes two different, entirely canonical noises! Also, there's a UV pen nib buried under the tip at one end. This can be used to write messages on the second toy that comes with it, the psychic paper. The latter is a piece of white plastic in a leather wallet, a replica of the Doctor's all purpose flimflam for showing people invitations, fake ID or whatever else he wants them to see. Shine the sonic on the message you wrote, and the writing appears, much like the messages the Doctor occasionally receives on his psychic paper. Hooray!

As much as I go on about Doctor Who and its heroic title character, the Doctor, one might think he's my only fictional hero. Au contraire! There's also Sam Beckett, and Sherlock Holmes, and Zorro. Zorro? Si! El Zorro! And here he is!

The bold renegade, El Zorro!

Now, I do like George Hamilton's Zorro, The Gay Blade, but for me the definitive Zorro will always be Guy Williams from the 1957-1959 Disney tv series (plus a few stories on The Wonderful World of Color through 1961). Guy's Diego de la Vega and black-masked alter ego add up to one great character: clever, brave and principled. I love the way Diego can think and talk his way out of almost any situation, even as Zorro does all the swashbuckling stuff. I have had my toy Zorro with me at work through my jobs with First Magnus and Beaudry, a reminder of the value of ethics, cleverness, and having the courage to fight for what you believe in. I haven't had occasion to battle injustice as an accountant, but I'd like to think that my little plastic hero would stand with me, encouraging me to do the right thing.

Zorro and his horse Tornado.

The last of my toy heroes is the only fast food premium to have a place on my desk. I expect you'll recognize him:

Snoopy, still writing about that dark and stormy night.

I have a few things in common with Snoopy. I live in my head a lot, not so much becoming a flying ace and other heroic figures as imagining the lives of heroes and writing down some of their adventures. (I actually need to do much more of this.) And like Snoopy, I have unsold novels, with a daunting number of rejections but a need to keep trying.

Now let's go see everyone else's favorite toys!

Linking List:

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Connie - Posted!
Far Side of Fifty Photos
http://farsideoffiftyphotos.blogspot.com/

Marina - Posted!
Milepebbles
http://milepebbles.blogspot.com

Em Dy
Captured Beat
http://intentiontotreat.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Suzanne R - Posted!
SuzyQ421's Photo Blog
http://suzyq421sphotoblog.blogspot.com

Marie - Posted!
Photographs & Memories
http://photographsmemoriestoo.blogspot.com/2008/12/round-robin-challenge-favorite-toy-this.html

Linda **Welcome new member!** - Posted! 12/28
Mommy's Treasures
http://www.mommystreasures.blogspot.com/

Sherrie - Posted!
Sherrie's Stuff
http://sherrie-plummer.blogspot.com/

Molly - Posted!
Return of the White Robin
http://returnofthewhiterobin.blogspot.com/

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Terri - Posted!
Ways I See the World
http://teelgeephotos.blogspot.com/

Valerie
Rosemary's Other Baby
http://rosemarysotherbaby.blogspot.com

And remember, you're welcome to join in, too, even if you're a day or two late. See the Round Robin Photo Challenges blog for details!

Karen

Gifts for My Invisible Kids

Half an hour from now, I'll be dropping off a present for some kid I've never met, hoping I'm not too late. It's for an Angel Tree program at St. Michael's, and the deadline was yesterday. If the person doing all the work doesn't pick up all the last day dropoffs until this morning, maybe I can sneak it in. If not, then I'll probably call and ask to deliver it to the person.

I hope Frank loves books!

The reason I missed the deadline was that I mislaid the Angel Tree paper ornament with the kid's name (Frank) for several hours, but really I was running behind on things all day yesterday. I never did get back to bed after blogging. Instead I ended up fussing with the ComicMaker application on the BBC Doctor Who web site (you can see the result here), catching up on online stuff, registering for an online orientation Friday for the CPA review course I finally bought, being upset and angry with a form letter from an HR department that said I do not "meet the minimum requirements" for the position of "Accountant," based on my application listing past jobs as, guess what, an accountant, and activating my replacement debit card, which contrary to printed instructions could not be done simply by entering my PIN at an ATM.

And I mailed Jacob's package. God bless the self serve station in the Cherrybell post office lobby. Really. It probably saved me 45 minutes in line. Off it went, the box with two proper presents, a couple of silly little mathoms (ooh, a bookmark!) and a copy of my ComicMaker story.

My annual glimpse of Jacob - now with a newly adopted sister!

Jacob is my godson. I last saw him nearly three years ago, on the occasion of his First Communion in the Roman Catholic Church. He lives in New Mexico. Every year I try to figure out how old he is now, and what's likely to go over well as a present. This year it ended up being leftovers, because last year I didn't get the physical gift mailed and resorted to Amazon. But that was supplemented with an autographed photo from Gallifrey One. I don't honestly know whether he'll like any of it, but I tried. It's hard to keep tabs on the changing likes and dislikes of a kid 400 miles away, when your only contact with him is a gift card and a handful of annual photos.

It's easier to buy presents for the other kids I never see, the truly invisible kids on the Angel Trees, and the receipients of Toys for Tots. Someone decided that Frank wants a bookstore gift card, and that's what he's getting. And last night, John and I made our annual Toys for Tots run.

John and I have been buying a selection of toys for the Toys for Tots campaign (and once, when we couldn't find a dropoff, for a different but similar campaign) for over twenty years, in good times and bad. It is pretty much the only Christmas activity we really enjoy together. It's fun to shop for generic kids, trying to guess what will go over well. Do poor kids have access to the Disney Channel shows? Will the kid like a tanned, blonde Barbie, or prefer a Bratz before they're taken off the market? Some of our choices are nostalgic on our part, and may not reflect current kiddom. Is the 64-crayon box of Crayolas with the built-in sharpener still desirable 45 years later? What about a Slinky? This year we got the Crayolas and skipped the Slinky and the Hannah Montana stuff, bought our traditional five Hot Wheels cards, the blonde Barbie instead of the Bratz, an Indiana Jones figure, a package of plastic dinosaurs, and I forget what else. And this year I had the sense to search online for a list of Tucson dropoff sites. They don't have them at Target or Toys R Us any more (we did our shopping at Target, for several reasons involving crowds and coolness), but LA Fitness up the street does have a box. They told me that it's been emptied and refilled more than once this year, and was overflowing when I got there last night. A local newspaper story said that this has been about the worst year ever for Toys for Tots donations, but I'm hoping that like us, some people are just slow off the mark, but will get there in the end, with toys for all those kids that for us will always remain faceless. Because really, they have faces and names, even if we never learn who they are, or who will get the Barbie and who the Indiana Jones. They're kids, and they deserve a Christmas too.

Karen

Christmas Morning, 1965

Weekend Assignment #194: Think back to when you were eight years old. What did you really really really want for Christmas/Hanukkah/Other seasonal celebration? We're taking the thing you wanted so much that you would just die if you didn't get it. If you can't remember what that was when you eight specifically, then pick an age close to it. But if you can remember what thing was when you were eight: Share it!

Extra Credit: Did you get it?

As it happens, I was just thinking about that Christmas a day or two ago. That was definitely the year I got Tutti. I'm not quite sure, but I think it was the year of the Thingmaker as well. In a sense they were both near-misses as presents, but one went over a million times better than the other.

The situation was this. The only doll I had with which to play Barbies was a knockoff, a slightly oversized, hollow-legged, cheap plastic doll called Peggy. I wanted a real Mattel doll, badly. To be honest, I can't remember now whether I had in mind a particular doll in the Barbie line, or just wanted "a Barbie." I probably was not gunning for a Midge or a Ken, but that still leaves three dolls that were sure to please me: Barbie, her sister Skipper, or her brand new little sister, Tutti. It's very possible I saw Tutti on tv and asked for one, but I'm guessing not. I think what I had in mind was Barbie, per se.

But would a Barbie have been better?

Child of the depression that she was, my mom had a tendency to economize on presents, especially considering that - let's be honest - I generally got a large number of them at Christmas. I strongly suspect that Tutti cost less than Barbie. She also didn't have breasts, which might have occasioned questions my mom would not have wanted to encourage in her eight-year-old. So on Christmas morning, the little box under the tree contained an oddly-named character who was the littlest doll in the Barbie line.

And I was thrilled.

In 1965, I was an instant fan of this doll.

Mind you, I remember doing a fair amount of rationalizing about this. I liked that Tutti was meant to be about my age, and I loved that she was bendable and posable in ways that Barbie and Skipper weren't. Heck, the bend-leg Barbies had only come out the year before, and here was Tutti, bending legs and arms and even torso (a little) into interesting, almost lifelike shapes. Cool! And most important of all, Tutti was what I had, so she became my favorite. I remember the booklet that came with the doll promoted a "Barbie Fan Club," and I seriously considered writing to Mattel that I wanted to join a Tutti Fan Club instead.

Sometime that winter or the next, I lost Tutti in the pile of plowed snow at the end of the driveway, and didn't find the doll until spring. The bendability didn't hold up well to repeated posing, and eventually the internal wires started sticking out of the hands and arms and legs. But I don't care. It was still a glorious present, albeit eclipsed years later by two larger dolls in the Barbie line: Francie's friend Casey with her dangle earring and belted gold lame swimsuit, and Talking Stacey, Barbie's friend with a real English accent.

The other big gift of 1965, possibly 1966, was something I wanted at least as much as a Barbie or Tutti, probably more. Creepy, spooky (not to mention mysterious and ooky) stuff was big that year, with The Munsters and The Addams Family on tv. Mattel had a new toy that was somewhat in that vein, sort of a craft toy for boys. The toy itself was a metal mold and oven set called a Thingmaker. The plastic toys it produced were called Creepy Crawlers. They were mostly bugs of various sorts, the ickier the better. They were heavily advertised on tv, but that wasn't my main inspiration for wanting them. One of my classmates, possibly Paula but I don't really remember, did a brisk business making and selling Creepy Crawlers to the rest of us. And my favorite mold wasn't a bug at all, but a human skeleton. How cool was that? I could choreograph my own little Dance Macabre with some of those! Even better, it could be made with glow-in-the-dark Plastigoop for extra creepiness!

That's what I wanted, and I made sure my parents knew it. Then Christmas came. Now, you must understand, my dad is one of the most organized gift givers in the world. He would wrap and number each gift, and kept a list of what everything was, the better to give everything out in order of increasing interest and excitement, but also mixing in the clothing and such for variety. But somehow, my parents screwed up momentarily that morning. It was probably my mom who handed me this one little present, in a shape I instantly recognized - or thought I did.

"It's Elmer's Glue," I said. And I was thinking, why would they give me glue for Christmas?

"Come on, dear," Dad said. "She can open the 'glue' later. How about opening this instead?" And he took away the little wrapped plastic bottle, and handed me something else.

And that's when I knew. It wasn't glue at all. It was Plastigoop! I was getting my Thingmaker! I didn't blurt my deduction, but happily opened whatever it was my dad had just handed me.

I was right, and I was wrong. It was Plastigoop, and I did get my Thingmaker.

Only it wasn't Creepy Crawlers.

No plastic spiders and centipedes. No skeletons that glowed in the dark. What I got instead was a variety of Thingmaker my mom probably considered more suitable for a little girl. It made troll-faced pencil-toppers. That is to say, the molds made something that looked like a cross between troll heads and Alfred E Newman. They had a little hole at the bottom so you could stick them on the ends of pencils. There were probably other molds and accessories to turn them into pins and such.

Now, I loved trolls, but these weren't quite trolls. They didn't have the long hair, for one thing, at least in my memory they didn't. And I wanted my glow-in-the-dark skeletons! I eventually managed to buy one insect mold from someone, but I never did get the skeletons - except for the one I bought from Paula for a dollar.

Oh, well.

Karen

In Which I Cure the Common Cold...With Pepper!

Kids check out 50-year-old toy cars at the toy show

Weekend Assignment #155: Recount a distinctively childish thing you did (or your children did) when you or they were children. Because things like painting your hands pink, or trying to make chocolate milk with mud, or arranging a marriage between your stuffed animals? Not something you're likely to do when you're older.

Extra Credit: The name of your favorite stuffed animal growing up.

D'oh! I forgot to do the Weekend Assignment last night! I think that's the first time that's happened in over two years.

My cubicle was colorful today in honor of my birthday.

It's interesting to look back on this, though, now that I'm officially 50 years and 50 minutes old. On the other hand, I'm sure I've told most of these stories before, and I need to get to bed so we can drive to the Civil War reenactment in the morning. But briefly:

Trophy and Diet Pepsi (although not cherry in 1965)

• When I was in first or second grade, I was sent to the nurse's office for having no underwear on. Why this was in the school nurse's purview I have no idea, but that's what happened. I had worked out, quite logically I thought, that if no one is ever supposed to see your underwear, then it doesn't matter whether you actually wear any, because no one will see it. The catch, of course, is that in those days, little girls wore dresses and skirts exclusively while at school, and it was by no means certain that they would never accidentally expose something. In short: I got caught.
• Perhaps a year or two after that, about the time I invented the peanut butter and bologna sandwich with mayo, mustard and lettuce, I was told that a nail would dissolve in a glass of Coke if left there long enough. (It wasn't true, but that was the urban legend.) Somehow from there I made my way to a theory that Diet Pepsi with black pepper in it might cure the common cold. So I conducted my scientific experiment, prepared the concoction and drank it, repeatedly. I'm pleased to say that I no longer have that cold today.
• The answer to the Extra Credit is Trophy, of course, and I still have him. He's about 44 years old now. Someone's puppy got hold of him early on and chewed off one end of the right rear leg, but my Aunt Grace, or possibly Aunt Marie, sewed it shut. I did some repairs myself at various times, restuffing him with tissues, sealing the surgical site with glue and white thread, and embroidering on a new nose made of black thread.
• My mom had polio encephalitis and other health problems in the early 1960s, and was hospitalized a few times in that period. Once I happened to mention to a friend's mother than my mom was ill. She took me and the friend to the store, where I picked out a get well gift: an embroidered handkerchief.
  
• Cindy R., Meredith P. and other friends used to trade with me all the time, swapping toys and dolls and china animals. Sometimes we would make several trades, only to end up where we started. One trade that did stick was when I traded a baby doll or china animal or gum cards or possibly a dollar for an outdated, naked Barbie doll. This was after the Twist-N-Turns came out in 1967, and Cindy didn't want her straight leg bubble cut Barbie any more. Although I was glad to get the doll - the only Barbie I owned during that period - I argued for months that it was a Midge doll. To me, the older Barbies were the ones with the pony tails, as depicted on a nurse kit my preschool classmate Nancy had in 1961.
  

And then there was the time I finally bought a 1962 Barbie with a ponytail. No, wait: that was last weekend!

I'll check in over the weekend, but I won't be online much. It's time for our central Arizona birthday jaunt! (And remember, the Museum of the Weird will be guarded while we're away, as always, by a large man and a small dog.)

Karen