Wednesday, August 22, 2007

remember when

some recent posts on dangerous toys and coveting your kid's things has me reminiscing.

i SO wanted the snoopy sno-cone machine and the easy bake oven (i think my resistance to cooking now is backlash from not being able to get the oven when i was little). my best friend jeanine had both, but somehow we never played with them. i don't remember exactly why, but maybe her mom wouldn't let us. or maybe just when i was there? hmm. (her mom also wouldn't let me put my feet on their walls. what's up with that?)

we played with lots of stuffed animals at my house and barb..., bar.., uh, you know, the doll with everything, when we were at her house. (and that's how you know how much i loved jeanine, because i would tolerate playing with that heinous plastic betch for TWENTY WHOLE MINUTES.) and then we would go swimming at my house.

with the exception of jeanine (because she was my bestest friend ever, except when we fought, and then made up 2 hours later), i was totally a user-friend. maybe i avoided you like the plague at school or even laughed when the other kids made fun of you, but if you had cool toys, i was at your house on weekends asking to play.

as much as i can recall, we didn't have really dangerous toys at our house. we didn't need to, we had the mother of all drowning hazards, a really tall pointy fence to hurdle, and, of course, the roof to jump off of. at one point, we even had the insane guard dog who only bit your friends (because he knew she wasn't really your friend, she was just using you for your pool and because your parents weren't around.) as if that wasn't enough, we also had snow plows to use as balance beams and a mound of rocks to scale. and that was just in our yard. if we crossed the street, we could entertain ourselves for hours hunting treasure or wild critters (like garter snakes and field mice that BITE!) in the empty lot/construction site. a trip to the back of the sub yielded a playground full of metal structures to frolic on. the woods beyond concealed a crick to wade, small waterfalls, and access to another subdivision literally MILES away by car.

where on earth were we and in what perilous activities were we engaged? our parents had no clue, and probably didn't care that much. well, maybe a little. but not enough to buy us a snoopy sno-cone machine.