28 Christmas Gifts You May Remember if You're My Age

With the plethora of links to "list websites" rampaging through Facebook, it's no surprise that some of them play on the nostalgic feelings of the otherwise unsuspecting masses. After seeing a list of toys from the 80s, complete with Cabbage Patch smarm and Care Bear dreck, I decided to create my own list.  Here are toys I remember receiving as Christmas gifts back in the day. They were so much neater than what passed for toys in the 80s.

1. Matchbox Cars:  The quintessential car toy for young boys. Now they are collectibles, especially if they come with their original box. But most of us were "driving" them in dirt driveways and letting them roll downstairs, so they may not be in particularly good condition today. Plus, who kept the boxes?

2. Hot Wheels Cars: The sportier, cooler cousin to Matchbox. Hot Wheels were made so as to roll more freely than Matchbox which made them perfect for zipping along hardwood floors and crashing into walls or furniture or even each other with damaging results.

3. Matchbox City:  I could spend hours driving my cars around Matchbox City, stopping at the service station for an oil change, driving over the bridge being careful not to fall off, going through the construction site. Of course, those hours turned to minutes and then nothing at all. But on rainy days, when boredom was the deciding factor, we may just pull it out again and take a spin around the block.

4, Hot Wheels Race Track and Supercharger: The track didn't stay together well, and the weight of the cars flying down it made it somewhat unstable. But it was a hoot to hook up the supercharger and see if we could keep the cars going around the oval on their own. At least until the supercharger's batteries wore down.

5. Mr. Potato Head: A classic. Give him different eyes, mouth, nose, hair, hat, etc, for a different look and then make different voices (I guess) as you try to animate him. I think there were other vegetables also, but they didn't catch on as well.

6. Gumby and Pokey: Flexible, able to be thrown into trees, it took a lot of effort to tear Gumby apart by the legs. But you could.

7. Lincoln Logs: In one can there were enough logs to build a small cabin. Want something bigger? You need more cans. I took my small ones and painted the inside flat connecting section either gray or blue and re-enacted Civil War battles.

8. Tinkertoys: Sort of a relative to the Lincoln Logs, the only thing I remember making with mine were dragsters.

9. Pick-Up Sticks: A game with plastic sticks that really wasn't that interesting. But we still had them for some reason.

10. Spirograph: Enough to keep a kid busy for a long time, it was always torture when you went too fast or hard and the drawing cog jumped out of the guides leaving errant marks in your otherwise beautiful work of spiral art.

11. GI Joe: I was into Sea Hunt and any other shows which had scuba divers. Heck, I used to get books out of the library about scuba diving. I've never gotten my diving certification, though I have done some snorkeling. GI Joe with scuba outfit was great fun during bathtime. And when done with that, we'd throw him into the trees. (Maybe to look for Gumby).

12. Toy Guns: Toy guns were the de rigueur playtime toy. If they were just regular toy guns, you had to yell "bang" to shoot them. If they were cap guns, well it took the play to a whole different level. That is until you ran out of caps because it was so much neater to take a whole roll of them and smash a rock down on them. The bang was much louder.

13. A different sort of Toy Gun: I had something like this, but I can't remember if it was a handgun or rifle. But I remember the plastic attachments that would shoot off the end of the barrel like a rocket propelled grenade. Only it was a soft plastic and it didn't travel very fast.

14. Erector Set: Metal pieces you could screw together and make cranes or large structures (that's what the box said). I think I mostly made dragsters with mine. I could also scrape the surface of my fingernails with the metal beams which always gave me teeth-gritting willies.

15, Creepy Crawlers: And how cool was it that you could pour the liquid into the mold, bake it in the oven? kiln? whatever the box that got hot was - until the goop hardened into a rubbery shape. Then it had to be pried out, but you could make spiders, worms, centipedes, all manner of creepy crawler things that fooled no one because blue, red and yellow just weren't natural colors for such things.

16. Easy Bake Oven: Another kid's toy that got hot, this time from a light bulb. I guess liability wasn't an issue back the 60s and 70s. My sisters had one - I think it was yellow. They made the items and we ate them. I think we thought they were pretty good, though they really couldn't have been.

17. Etch-a-Sketch: A frustrating toy if you wanted to draw circles. And if you dropped one, all your hard work could get partially or totally erased. There are people who have since created nice works of temporary art with Etch-a-Sketches, but they must be super deluxe models because I just don't see how it could be done with the regular ones.

18. View Master: And how cool was it to view things in 3D? Very. But you had to have a lot of the discs for any sort of longevity to the novelty of it.

19. Battleship: You sunk my battleship! Seemed hit or miss at first, but we soon learned to vector in on targets and observe miss patterns to try and determine where the opponent's ships were.

20. Stratego: Another strategy game in which success was determined by how cleverly one could set up his/her army. The flag was never up on the front line.

21. Gnip Gnop: Ping Pong backwards. This game was far more exciting as a TV commercial than as an actual home game. The reality certainly didn't match the marketing.

22.  Mouse Trap Game: This Rube Goldberg-esque game never worked as well as what we saw in the commercial. The cage often got caught on the pole spikes where it was mounted, the ball didn't necessarily stay on the path on which it was launched. And it took some time to set up in order to play.

23. Operation: Yeah, another gimmicky game that was fun for the first few go rounds. Then, boring.

24: Shenanigans: I can't remember if I had this game, or a friend had the game, or if I just watched the TV show on which it was based. That's really all I can say about it.

25. Twister: Only worth playing at a party where many people can laugh at the silly contortions needed to win.

26. SSP Racers: Now these were cool. You take the toothed length of plastic, slip it down into the cogged flywheel in the center, give it a hard pull, set it down and it will fly. And they came in some rad models.

27. Supercar: A toy based on the Claymation TV show of the same name, I loved mine.

28: Vertibird: Possibly one of my all time favorite toys. Using the levers on control box, you could make a helicopter fly around and around in circles. The trick was to try to land it lightly or pick up items using the hook that hung from its belly. It was my first remote control toy, and even though it was tethered to the center control box, it was enough to ignite imagination.

There are other toys I could have named: Colorforms, Slinky, Monopoly, Legos, Johnny West, etc, but you gotta end the list at some point, right?

Candy I Really Didn't Want at Halloween

Open the trick-or-treat bag after a long night's work of walking the neighborhood and it was like a candy Christmas. There were delights to be found in lollipops, chocolate bars, chewing gum, Sweet Tarts and the like. But mixed in all this confectionery gold lurked things that would make the hungriest dog or dad turn up his nose and walk away. Oh, we still ate them, for the most part.

But we certainly didn't enjoy them.

Here is my list of those candies that were definitely not desirable.


1. Turkish Taffy - I don't even remember why, but I did not like Turkish Taffy.

2. Red Hots - Never a fan of something that burned the insides of your mouth and tasted like pepper. That's not the point of candy.

3. Mary Janes - Yeah, we'd eat them in all their peanut butter chewiness. But they were free. I don't think we ever actually bought them at the store. Well, that is if we had more than a nickel to spend.

4. Black Licorice - The red was good. But black was something I avoided at all times. I've never liked Anisette for the same reason.

5. Candy Corn - It was pretty ubiquitous. I guess it gave the candy-giver the sense that perhaps they had hidden health qualities because they were modeled after a vegetable. But these pure sugar candies shaped like niblets didn't have much of a flavor beyond sweet.

6. Candy Necklace - These hard, sugar pills strung together had a very vague taste of fruit to them. They were really insipid and more reminiscent of plaster chunks than a decent candy.
 

7. Chuckles - Sugar-frosted, congealed jelly candies. Need I say more?

8. Circus Peanuts - Shaped like peanuts, colored like pumpkins, Circus Peanuts had the consistency of slightly set wallpaper paste and a kind of pukey banana flavor. Strange, very strange, indeed.

9. Necco Wafers - A big roll of disappointment. These hard, powdery wafers were similar to the Candy Necklace mentioned earlier. We'd suck on them, but they were so very unsatisfying.

10. Boston Baked Beans - The box says candy coated peanuts, but I seriously don't remember the peanuts at all.

11. Good & Plenty - More of that snarky licorice flavor and sticky chewy.

12. Mint Juleps - I didn't hate these too badly. They were a mildly minty, soft, taffy-like candy.

13. Taffy in Plain Wrappers - The best description I've read of these is that they tasted like burnt hair. And that's all I have to say about them.

Some Books I Read as a Youth

The Process Transcendent

Your mind has drifted to that unmapped area, the area that defies definition and description.

You don't know how you got there; the path seemed quite circuitous if you can remember it at all.

No matter, you are there. And while there, words come to you easily, mysteriously.

They are perfect words capturing subtle nuances you can only dream about on your down days. They turn an emotion, light up an imagination. They are power.

There may be only a line or an entire verse, but you quickly look for something on which to write these words down because they are ephemeral, fragile, and you know that to ignore them means to lose them forever.

So you get them written on paper. Paper because getting to a computer and typing them into Word or Wordpad or whatever you use seems to technify the creative process and you need it to be free flowing for now.

You suspect there's more and once you can get it on paper the result will be a world-beater poem. An instant classic. Something that will be discussed in creative writing classrooms in high schools and colleges for decades to come. Maybe even centuries.

It's that good.

But something happens.

You are interrupted. Your schedule demands take priority over your creative desires. There is a job that needs to be focused on in order to justify a paycheck. Your spouse has expectations which require you to divert your attention elsewhere.

Or maybe the door to that wonderful area of your mind simply closes and leaves you with only the first few inspired words.

You go through your day and think of them, hoping to make it back to that sweet grove of creativity in the dark forest of your imagination. But the path is lost to you and you wander the woods looking for familiar trees.

You can't let the words lie dormant for too long, for you know the spark that ignited them was tied to mind and heart in a gestalt whole that can't be replicated. So on the remaining fumes of the epiphany you start scribbling down more words that go in a direction which seems appropriate to the meaning that flashed before your mind's eye.

However, the words you are writing now are hard coming, and you have to work for them. And in the violent wrestling with a mind not sparking so fully, you think that you have strayed badly from original intent.

There may be a few more moments of inspiration along the way in the process. They are helpful, but often only for a line or two. In rare moments, there is enough juice to carry you through to the end with minor bumps along the way. If you are really fortunate, it all comes fairly quickly which is nice, but actually makes you question the legitimacy of what you have written.

The process could take minutes, hours, even weeks. In the end you have a completed piece in front of you. A totally birthed poem.

You are unimpressed with the result. It doesn't come anywhere near capturing that genesis moment when inspiration first struck. The message to it warped and deviated from course leaving you with something totally different from what was originally envisioned.

You read it and say, "Meh. I'll keep it, throw it into the shoebox with all the others and hope something else comes along."

But a strange thing happens.

You reread the poem several times. You look at it, maybe make some adjustments to it for better flow, more natural wording. You caress it. You consider it from different perspectives.

A new vision comes to your mind. This poem is actually better than you once thought. It fulfills a purpose previously not considered when the beginning was fresh.

You grow to love it.

You realize it has its own unique voice, a personality that isn't found in other poems you've written.

It has value.

It is your offspring.

The Sameness of Monotony or Vice Versa

I change my Facebook cover photo (the large horizontal photo at the top of one's timeline) more frequently than most. Every three to four days usually, sometimes more often, sometimes less. Some people would say that I'm just trying to get attention. But they would be wrong.

Very wrong.

I'm just trying to shred the sameness of my hours, days, weeks.

I get up, go to work - very tedious, mundane work - for 8 hours, come home, hang out, go to bed, get up....

And on weekends it seems there is always more work to do than can possibly be done in such a short time. At least this is what my wife has told me time and again every weekend for years.

Church has become mostly work, too, with behind the scenes responsibilities.

There's no reprieve with the exception of a little vacation time during the year. So I change my cover photo and sometimes my profile picture as well as a symbolic way to say I won't accept sameness in my life.

Even though I do.

A Modest Proposal

The threading that takes place on Facebook has led to an enormous ball of yarn that can lead just about anywhere. One of my friends posted a link to a blog about the nature of viral YouTube wedding proposals.

While the blog isn't particularly well written or eloquent, it does make some good points.

It basically states that marriage proposals have become huge creative affairs caught on video with the intent of drawing enough traffic to make it go viral. And that the nature of true romance isn't in how a video track is laid down, but how a man is willing to lay down his life for his future wife.

The writer includes an example from his own father's proposal. I don't know if it was real or made up, but I think it provides a realistic contrast to what we find on YouTube these days.

I can see how the phenomenon of the theatrical proposal would have started. Some guys wanted to do something different, something unique and memorable to ask for their girlfriend's hand in marriage. In order to capture the moment, they had it video recorded by a friend or family member.

Then to be able to show it to friends, they uploaded it to YouTube where other people saw it as well, and it gave them the idea to do something similar, or to even top it.

And the snowball started rolling downhill.

Now it often seems like the point is the theatrical production of the proposal and how much of an audience it can generate as opposed to an agreement in kind between two people to share the rest of their lives together.

As for how I proposed to my wife, it was boring by comparison.

It was a dark, windy beach in southeast Georgia. The night was warm. We were the only ones there. There was no ring, no kneeling, no fireworks except for that which went off in my soul when she said, "Yes."

It was perfect.

And it was memorable.

Opportunities Lost

I should have dated more in college.

I don't mean the type of dating where one is searching for a mate, spouse or life partner. Just the type of casual dating where you get to know people better.

Many of my college friends are on Facebook, and I have struck up online relationships with several that I never really experienced during school. I knew them at school, chatted with them in the student center or somewhere on campus. But I think I missed out on really getting to know them beyond the simple, "hey, how's it going?"

I know that establishing a deeper connection with someone during dating can lead to intimacy in a relationship which ultimately could lead to lifelong commitment in marriage, and that certainly would have been a risk. I say risk because eventually I did find the woman I would marry, but that was later in life when I was in the Army. I'm not looking to replace her, but I still think that it would have led to deeper friendships with those women with whom I currently interact on the internet.

They are all married now as well. Most of their husbands are strangers to me, though I do know a few as they were also students at the same school I attended.

It's entirely possible that the hormones of youth would have turned such dating into a romantic prowl. And it's also probable that I view things quite differently now at 50 than I did when I was 20. Maybe it wouldn't have worked as I envision it could have.

But now my interactions with them are limited to whatever little snippets, posts and messages are swapped in cyberspace. I don't feel bad about this. I just wish I had taken the time to enjoy their company and learn about them beyond discussing homework or campus events.

That's all I'm saying.