You are currently browsing the daily archive for May 16, 2018.
If you follow me on Instagram, then you already know that I purchased a journal/book called “99 Things That Bring Me Joy”. I’ve already finished this journal, & I will say that it was a challenge towards the end. This journal of lists really made me think long & hard for thoughtful & meaningful answers. I didn’t want to just write down the first thing that came to mind, or make up something, or stretch/embellish the truth just to fill a blank page. I actually, genuinely wanted to write real & truthful answers that portrayed the many unique sides of my inner personality. There are some answers to some list topics that made me uncomfortable, but I still wrote down the most honest answer, even if the answers I chose were embarrassing.
The first third of this journal contained pretty straight-forward, soft-pitch topics about things of my childhood that brought back so many fun & interesting memories for me. The first list topic was called “Childhood toys you loved”. Here are my answers…
…But to dive deeper into each item, let me explain here.
“Cheer Bear” from Care Bears
When I was a child, growing up, all of the kids in my family loved the Care Bears. We loved watching the animated movies & play with all of the toys. I have no idea who’s idea it was to collect all of the Care Bears stuffed toys, but we collected them all as one whole family, & each family member got to pick one of the bears to be their personal mascot. My cousins all assigned my mascot to be Cheer Bear because they knew I loved the color pink, & that bear’s logo was a cutesy rainbow. At that time, in the mid to late 80s, we had two cousins, one boy & one girl, who were still in diapers. So, they were clearly assigned the mascots of Baby Hugs & Baby Tugs.
Besides having all of the plastic posable figurines, Play-Doh kits, & stuffed animals, my aunt sewed us each Care Bears mascot pillow toys & baby blankets…except my baby blanket was the only one that wasn’t Care Bears themed. My baby blanket was actually Strawberry Shortcake themed, & it was also sewn by my amazing aunt. I still have my hand-sewn baby blanket to this very day, & keep it well taken care of.
I still remember each of my siblings & cousins would have our own Care Bears stuffed bear, & we would all bring our stuffed toys to family gatherings at our grandmother’s house, which was the central hub for all of our family get-togethers & summer holiday vacations. Whatever happened to my Cheer Bear stuffed animal, I’m not entirely sure. I remember later on in its life a few mysterious brown stains appeared on it, & eventually my mom donated it to some place like the Salvation Army or Good Will, & I never saw that stuffed bear ever again.
Fisher-Price camper toy
This camper toy was one of my favorite toys when I was a kid. My mom never really allowed me to have too many toys when I was growing up. She didn’t like a messy house, & she was always nagging me to put away my toys. I clearly remember this being one of my most treasured toys because I loved how you could stow everything away into a nice little camper, & then you could take everything out & pop out the camper hood.
I loved making up make-believe stories about these little, creepy Fisher-Price dolls that came with this toy. It gave me hours of entertainment, especially since I was already taking camping trips with my family at that age, & I already understood what it was like to pack everything into your car & go camping. It was, however, very shocking to me as a child when I learned that my mom had given my toy away to another friend’s child, even before I had ever grown out of it.
Hello Kitty doll house
This Hello Kitty dollhouse was my all-time favorite childhood toy. I’ve very literally been a fan of Hello Kitty & all of her Sanrio friends since I was a little kid. This dollhouse was one of the very first Hello Kitty toys I ever owned. I loved how you could pack up everything inside the dollhouse, & it had a handle on the top so you could move this toy anywhere around the house. I can’t remember when or where I got it, if it came from one of my uncles back in Japan, or if my parents bought it for me at what was formerly known as Sunshine Station, but now renamed to Sanrio Surprises.
When I was a child, I used to get a lot of my sister’s hand-me-down Sanrio school supplies & toys, so it was always a special treat for me when my parents would take me to the Sunshine Station store to buy my very own Hello Kitty themed toy. My favorite part of this dollhouse was that it had a garage, & you could keep the family car inside of it. I also loved playing with the swing, & I especially loved the gate because when you would open the gate, the little row of flowers would pop up from the fence.
As I got older, I tried my best to keep this dollhouse from being donated or thrown away, always thinking in the back of my mind that I would one day pass this down to my future child. Little did I know that my parents had kept this dollhouse for me, but it had eventually gotten so rotted & disfigured from various rodents & bugs creating nests & chewed up holes, that I had to throw it away. Here is a sad & depressing photo of the aftermath of the ravaging effects of careless neglect.
Rainbow Brite
I can never remember how I ever discovered half of the toys I used to own when I was a child. My memory often fails me. I don’t even remember watching the Rainbow Brite cartoons when I was growing up, & trust me, I watched a ton of TV when I was younger. (My siblings & I were always glued to the TV…especially after the invention of the MTV music channel.)
I was not a fan of dolls or playing with dolls when I was growing up. I went through an extremely short phase of playing with Barbie dolls, but I never had dolls that I would actively play with. Yet somehow I just loved this Rainbow Brite doll so much. I used to imagine wearing her brightly colored, shiny metallic clothes, & have long beautiful hair like the character did.
I mentioned before in a previous blog post that when I was a kid, I once tried to build a fake gun out of my miscellaneous LEGO bricks. Of course, that nefarious weapon never came to be, & I ended up just making an ‘L’ shaped object & only pretended that it was a gun. I was too chicken to actually make things like guns & swords out of my LEGO bricks.
When I was a kid, I had a medium sized bucket of miscellaneous LEGO bricks that had a lid & a handle on it. I remember my mom buying it for me from the Toys ‘R’ Us toy store. I never made anything interesting or useful out of my bricks. I would make simple things like a basic house or try to make a large tower by stacking as many of the bricks together as I could.
The one memory I have about my tub of LEGO bricks that really stands out in my mind is of me playing on the floor of my bedroom, which was covered in a processed-cheese-yellow colored shag carpet from the 1970s. I would dump out my bricks onto the floor & just spend hours making shapes with my bricks. My mom would periodically walk by my bedroom, mostly to check if I was making a huge mess or not, & she would always scold me to put all of my bricks back into the tub, or else she would take them away. I was always careful to make sure every single brick was picked up after I played with them, mostly because I was scared of my mom’s strictness, but also because I didn’t want her to take away &/or give away more of my precious toys.
When my dad’s brothers were still alive, they would send us care packages from Japan all the time. Whenever we went to visit my aunts & uncles in Japan, they would send us home with lots of snacks & souvenirs. Also, when they would visit our home, they would always bring fun Japanese treats.
I remember an uncle (one of my dad’s older brothers) once stayed at our house, & he brought me this little cooking play set when I was around 6 or 7 years old. I thought it was so much fun & would often play with the set in my backyard by myself. All of my siblings by then were literally twice my age (or more), so they had no interest in playing children’s games with me, & were more focused on hanging out with their friends. I never had a problem entertaining myself, & I thoroughly enjoyed playing with this cooking set.
The cooking set itself was made out of tin & plastic. It came with a little plastic stove top (with little plastic knobs), a mini rice cooker, a tin pan with a rubber fried egg, a mini tin plate & rice bowl, a mini tin spatula, & a plastic pair of chopsticks. I would sit on my backyard deck (weather permitting) & pretend that I was cooking at a restaurant. One thing that I remember the most about this cooking set was that I disliked the nasty chemical-y smell of the rubber fried egg. I also didn’t like that the set rusted so fast. In the end, my mom threw out this toy set since it was rusting.
I once knew a girl in my neighborhood who had a complete set of Sylvanian Families dolls & a full dollhouse complete with furniture. At the time, I was super envious of this girl, & every time my mom would take me to visit her house, I would always want to play with her dollhouse & little Sylvanian Families animals. I only had a few animals myself, & was in total awe of this girl’s collection. Oh man, when I was a kid, I wanted to get all of the Sylvanian Families animals, & dollhouse, & all of the dollhouse furniture.
At the time, I only knew that I could get everything in Japan, since the only animals I had were given to me by my aunts & uncles from Japan. Of course, my mom being the strict parent, wouldn’t allow me to get more of these figures, & she definitely did not allow me to get the full dollhouse. First of all, it would’ve been impossible to store such a massive dollhouse in our home with so many living at home. Secondly, the whole setup: dollhouse, figures, & furniture were way too expensive. I loved these cute, flocked animal figures & would often play with them in my Hello Kitty dollhouse.
Fisher-Price medical kit
I remember playing with this toy a lot when I was a child. Since I had always been that kid who was always getting sick or going to the doctor’s office, I really loved playing with this medical kit from Fisher-Price. The funny thing is, is that I would use all of these medical toys on myself. I often played by myself at home, since my siblings were all way, way older than I was (& some of them were already getting their driver’s license or going to college). So, I would often play pretend & make up stories/scenarios all by myself.
When I played with this toy set, I spent a lot of time pretending that the stethoscope was actually a walkie-talkie & would talk to myself using the little foam pad. I was fascinated by the way my voice sounded, & would try to make my voice sound like it had an echo. I would also try all sorts of ways to pry open the medicine bottle with my teeny-tiny hands, or use kid scissors, & try to discover what was inside the bottle that gave it a rattling sound when you shook it. Yes, I was a very weird child. I understand this & take full responsibility for my childhood actions.
I had not learned what Playmobil was until I was a much older child (around 10 or 11 years of age). There once was a huge F.A.O. Schwartz toy store in the downtown shopping district in the big city near my house. My dad used to take me there for a special treat. It was there that I had discovered the magical world of those little German plastic figures & their incredibly detailed play sets with larger-than-life dioramas. I had no idea that these toys had already been around for nearly 20 years before I discovered them at the toy store in the early 90s.
I instantly fell in love, probably because these toys were more readily available in the U.S. than the Japanese Sylvanian Families toy sets. My mom was less reluctant to allow me to get the giant Playmobil dollhouse this time around. She actually liked the detail & design of these toy sets & enjoyed watching me build each set. The set that drew my attention the most was the Victorian dollhouse series. I worked my way up the dollhouse by slowly acquiring each room set one-by-one. I never ended up getting the dollhouse.
By the time I saved up enough for the dollhouse, the big F.A.O. Schwartz toy store permanently closed, & no other toy store in my area was selling the dollhouse (or other Playmobil sets at the time). So, I put all of my individual box sets of furniture into a storage box & stowed it away in our home storage closet. As I got older, I grew out of playing with dollhouses, & ended up donating all of my Playmobil sets to a Goodwill donation store.
When I was growing up, no one ever taught me how to ride a bicycle. My parents didn’t know how to ride, & as I mentioned before, my siblings were all in their teenage years & wanting to hang out with their friends rather than stick around to teach me how to ride a bike. So, my mom one day gave me a pair of these training roller skates. I was super stoked to have these skates that I could roll around my backyard with.
These roller skates were probably my most favorite childhood toy from the 80s. They were easy for a little tyke like me to strap on to my shoes, & because I had small feet, I was able to really get good use of this toy. These roller skates were adjustable, so I was able to grow into them for a little while. The best part about these training roller skates was that it was easy for me to learn how to use the brakes/stoppers in the front.
I’ve said in the past that I was a total wimpy, non-adventurous kid when I was growing up. I was too chicken to try anything outside of my comfort zone, & it didn’t help that my parents were extremely overprotective of me, so they also wouldn’t allow me to do some things other kids were doing. These training roller skates were a perfect medium, so I could learn how to be more adventurous, get out of my comfort of hiding inside the house & play outdoors, & actually play with some sportier toys (if you would consider roller skates to be sporty).
I’ve always been enamored with these Fisher-Price toy roller skates, & I think this toy helped push me into learning how to ice skate. When I became a teenager, my mom signed me up for ice skating lessons. I don’t think she was necessarily pushing me to become a competitive skater, but she at least wanted me to take up some sort of sport instead of staying holed up inside the house. I really enjoyed taking those ice skating lessons, even though I was the oldest kid in my beginner’s group. By the time we were learning how to do simple spins & lifting one leg, those little 7-8 year old kids were skating circles around me. I got pretty far in my lessons until I had to quit because my mom re-joined the workforce with a full-time job & could no longer drive me to the rink. I still know a few tips & tricks from my old ice skating lesson days, & I find it still fun to skate. I even bought a pair of $10 dollar rollerblades when I was studying abroad for the summer in China. I’d like to credit these toy skates for stirring up my interest in skating. I never got into riding bicycles, but at least I can skate.
Ok, I have reached the home stretch of this ridiculous blog post. I really enjoy filling out these prompted lists, & I hope this list thing will really help me to open up more to everyone. I’m excited to dive deeper into the more serious list topics, but alas my OCD personality won’t allow me to skip ahead. Until then, cheers mates!
Today’s song of the day by a band that definitely DOES NOT sound anything like David Bowie:
Rabbits & Foxes 
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