Toys ‘R Scary

-

June 2

I could spend hours with my toys. There were all these games, always titled with the same word repeated twice, like ‘ghar ghar’, ship ship, adventure adventure. And then there were my barbies. None of my friends had as many dolls as I did – there were the princesses, the regular ones, the male versions called Kens and I was in love with the Pizza Hut set I had.

I had quite a collection of mostly blond, very well-endowed barbies. But it didn’t happen overnight. Every summer my favorite aunt in America would take me to Toys ‘R Us and without fail, I would levitate towards the pinkest section and pick out a mermaid or a princess or a kitchen set for the mermaid/princess. Every birthday she would send me a doll.

I would also spend time reading books. Or skating in the terrace and singing songs. Or sprawled on the sofa, getting really bored. My time on the computer was strictly regulated (that is once computers came into our houses and lives) as was my TV watching. I credit my creative, well-rounded, optimistic personality on this relatively tech-easy childhood.

Back then, Toys ‘R Us was my paradise. I went to the super-sized store today after several years and I have to admit, it was still pretty cool. There was the awesome Lego section, the Crayola section where you could color in books or stickers or make your own stickers or bracelets… but then there were the more disturbing – and also more popular – sections. With Hannah Montana dolls and other teen celebrities turned into plastic. The frightening Bratz: over-sexualized and Goth as usual. And other toys and games that require less creativity, more batteries. That look cuter but don’t really teach you much and can choke you way too easy (Squinkies, anyone?).
What’s worse is that none of these old or new toys can be to kids what my toys were to me. They don’t have the attention spans for long-term relations. Laptops, cell phones, portable DVD players and all other bad-for-your-eye devices with screens that come in a million sizes… these are the things that matter now. And it breaks my heart, it really does. Especially when I see a seven-year-old girl picking up a Justin Bieber doll.

Sigh. I guess it might not be such a bad thing that kids have short attention spans now. So what if your little girl doesn’t believe her toys will come to life when she falls asleep at night – I mean, look at the four-year-old boy who can purchase new games on his mom’s cell phone! Woot. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Norma in the Snow

-
Image
Snowflakes, light, uneven, like god shredding cold clouds up above, they fall, almost like a dream that evaporates when it touches your skin – The asphalt is covered in sludge, ice and mud, people catching hold of one another as they hurry across, slipping out of their thoughts and into the present before they hit the curb.  The buses are running late. The sky has been white all day, like a blank canvas – no paint, no inspiration, it’s all been done before and maybe god doesn’t feel like sketching a replica today.  It’s darkening now and the street lights switch on, automation, magic, call it what you please. An old man wearing a navy beanie sticking like a gnome’s hat on his head rolls onto the bus stop.  He is sitting in a scooter, a grocery bag stuffed in a small black basket on the front.  His eyebrows are bushy, sticking out in all directions – with eyebrows like that, his expression was forever a scowl.  “Greg died five years ago, Norma!” h...
Read more

A Tribute to TCF

-
Nothing makes you feel more like a giant than sitting on small wooden chairs surrounded by tiny first graders in their classroom.  For a classroom observation, we are supposed to slip into a class quietly and just sit in the back. We’re not to make any comments and neither is the teacher supposed to pay any attention to us. The idea is, of course, to observe a class as would be without your presence. My favorite class to observe is always in the pre-primary section where the students weigh almost the same as their chunky book bags and want at any point in time to color in their workbooks. The children are curious and bright-eyed, they keep peaking over their shoulders and giggling when they catch my eye. “Are you our new teacher?” they would often ask (in their minds all females on school premises are teachers). There is one special memory from these classroom observations that  sticks out and makes me smile even now. The teacher was walking around the classroom, tal...
Read more

A litany of firsts

-
Image
  "You know mama, there is a phone in school and it's always making noises. It says things like 'I'm in the backyard, I'm in the backyard!" Took me a couple of minutes and I'm not sure if this is one of the imagined tales or mostly real as seen and understood by a 4.5 year old ... I think Z was talking about the PA system? So far, one of the nicest things about school is what I was fearing to be the most arduous one - the walk to school, which theoretically and according to Google Maps is 8 minutes but anyone who has walked anywhere with small children will know that that can be anywhere from 15 to ohmygod-I-cannot-fit-any-more-sticks-in-my -purse-please-let's-just-get-there... It was this fear that made me leave early on the first day and we were literally the first people at the gates which hadn't even opened! The first day of school. As far as milestones go, that felt like a very big one. There were no tears though, just some nerves and tuggi...
Read more