He Man meets Inspector Gadget
Today my youngest grandchild is coming to spend the day with me, and I've been rummaging through the old boxes of toys in the basement, trying to find age-appropriate selections for this new-age kid.
He's only one & a half years old, but already he's been bombarded by all the techno wizardry of the modern age -- Baby Einstein videos to improve his brain, mechanical toys to improve his motor co-ordination, bright-colored visuals to stimulate his interest.
What's a grandma to do?
In the basement I find his dad's little John Deere tractors, still wearing traces of the hard clay mud that they had when we put them away. Up here in these hills, the mud became a permanent addition to the paint, once those little tractors plowed ground in our yard. The boys had quite an elaborate excavation right outside our living room windows under the big oak tree. They and their little tomboy sister played out there for hours on end throughout the summer months. I can look out the window and still see them in my mind's eye..
Upstairs in the big wooden trunk which his grandfather made for him, I can find my younger son's box of HeMan figures, perfect as the day we bought them. We added to the collection, one gruesome "action figure" at a time. There's a character with a snake-like tongue, which snaps out when you push a little lever on the back of his head. Pretty simple stuff by today's standards. My three-year-old grandson Mikey was so taken with the snake man (which he called "Scarey Guy") that I let him take it back to Minnesota with him on the plane. I'm sure it later got lost in all the techno-babble of his own toybox.
It's like being in a time warp to see my three grandchildren playing with their parents' toys from the past. Mikey is the oldest of my grandchildren, and I feel sure that the differences between today's toys and those of the past will get more pronounced as they get older.
Until then, I'll just sit on the floor and play HeMan and John Deere tractor games with my youngest grandson, hoping that he grows into as wonderful a young man as his daddy did.
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I have to say that I don't believe I ever want to see "Perfect the Pig" again, as long as I live!!
So, I'll have to decline the gift, but I would most certainly love to see you and your brother, as I have enjoyed your earthy, and delightfully sarcastic sense of humor on our blogs.
One resident said that she didn't need a library card - She had her Bible.