So sorry that this is so late this week. I had every intention of doing in advance, but time just slipped away because of the constant attention that the updates to the Jay and Jack PLUS stuff needed. I thought that I’d at least have a few spare minutes while at home on Long Island this past weekend, but I always forget that I have very limited Internet access on my computer when I’m there. My Macbook’s wifi card is going, so I rarely get Internet anywhere that isn’t just my apartment. I get like 2 bars at my parents’ house and even then, it’s a struggle to get a web page to load. That said, now it’s Monday and I should’ve had this up three days ago. This week’s challenge topic is in honor of Jay’s birthday last Wednesday. I guess if I had actually done this on Friday, it would’ve made more sense, but oh well.
The toy you most treasured.
As a very young girl, I don’t remember ever specifically gravitating towards one particular toy. I know there were toys that I loved playing with, like my Waterbaby (does anyone out there even remember those?!), my Hollywood Hair Barbie, and my American Girl doll. I never really treasured any one toy in particular as having special meaning to me – not in the way that my husband probably did. Save for a few Beanie Babies, there weren’t any toys that I wanted my parents to keep for any special reason when I outgrew them. My books were another story. I still have a lot of the Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley, & Nancy Drew books in my parents’ basement. Reading and writing were more my jam. I created things with my early childhood toys. There was a period of time when I used to make gossip magazines about the lives of our Barbie Dolls. This is not a joke. My parents still have all of them. I even created “albums” for some of the “singers” to go with the stories about them in the fake mags. (They were glorified mixed tapes, but they had album artwork and everything.) Those things I’ve treasured; the actual toys were merely tools used to tell the stories and make them come to life. Surprisingly, I never felt long lasting attachments to any of them.
I did, however, have a favorite toy: My Lights Out game. I loved that little handheld electronic ball of distraction. Lights Out was released in 1995. The object of the game was to figure out the pattern to turn all of the lights off (get all of the “lights out”) on the board in order to progress to the next round in the least amount of steps possible. The further you got, the harder the lights puzzle was. I think you had to also beat a certain amount of steps per board too; for example, if you had to complete the board in 5 steps and then made it in 7 steps, you lost and had to go back to the beginning. I was obsessed with this toy. I took it everywhere and stayed up late playing it. I’ve always liked challenges, puzzles, and brain-y type games and I think Lights Out was when my love of “figuring things out” really came to fruition. I looked for this game when I was home at my parents house on Saturday because I wanted to take a picture of it for this post, but I couldn’t find it. I kinda want to play it again, to be honest. I wonder if it’s still as much fun. Part of me wants to go, “Probably not,” but then again, I am the girl who had a renewed love affair with the Sims on my iPad after I posted about it, lol.
What toy did you most cherish? Doesn’t have to be from your childhood, either…
