Passing through a rack full of tiny food made of plastic in transparent display, I thought hopelessly about how would I ever to afford that one day, to set up my own miniature kingdom (Insert crazy gigantic laugh here)
I like to look at miniature, now they have those very fine made Japanese miniature with impressive details and color, every kind of food, every kind of kitchen ware and even, I found designer chairs yesterday. The price, wow, the plastic food costs more than my meals and I don’t even understand what are the meanings of the texts written on the box!
I also like to press my face against the miniature army display, infantry, paratroopers, navy, commandos etc in their full suits and weapons. War, pfff, but the mini things are so cute with those realistic colors and finishing. But again, it’s expensive.
For this kind of things, it’s better not to start buying, even the tiniest part of it, because once it starts, it's hard to stop and unless you’re someone rich, it’s not worth to sacrifice hard earn money for them.
In the middle of my money saving look and see, there was a kid choosing many items for her birthday present, and two men who purchased Barbie dolls, yes, Barbie doll, I guess it’s Bonnie & Clyde collector edition. Hubby made funny faces when he secretly asked me, ”Are they buying dolls?”
“Maybe. Maybe they are collector, doesn’t matter.” I saw one young guy in TV with his Barbie collection, so I guess, if I could like army dolls, guys could like Barbie dolls too.
But after circling around the store for a while, I thought again, two young men buying identical dolls, so they would play the doll together like me and my friend during childhood, actually, teenager hood, it’s kind of weird, isn’t it…. ?
Okay, I don’t care what are their preferences, but I was disturbed by another thought when I saw that girl choosing her birthday present. I want this, I want that, you have to buy them for me…
I know, that’s a crazy thought, but, what if my children behave like that? How if they become spoiled brat like those kids I’ve seen everywhere? And kid’s toys nowadays are dry-pocketing expensive. My brother bought a Power Ranger’s sword for 50 bucks! And what was the fun of that? Sing sing sing, I hit you, I hit you again, oh, I’m bored. Another toy please! But have to be Power Rangers, or Barney or Leapfrog or something familiar from the TV.
My first nephew is considered a well-behaved kid. When he was younger, the only toys he wanted were ball and ball. So, ball is cheap, cute, and they are a lot of variations of balls. But he has two sets of grandparents, parents and a few sets of uncle and aunts. Soon, he had all the ball in the world. Now he moved to more expensive toys.
When we were kids, we didn’t have those kind of luxury, we bought most of the toys with pocket money, toys that most kids had were marbles, one-piece comic strip cut into thirty six pieces to be played as cards, and plastic characters like birds, cats, superheroes we used to hit into a circle drawn by chalk. Or chalk and match, to play the one or two leg jumping, or a row of rubber band tied into one string and again, one or two leg jumping. See, no wonder there were not fat kids around the neighborhood, but dirty, hungry and creative.
Spoiled kid? Try to whine and be whacked. But of course they were whinny and spoiled rich kids around and if we did anything or touched their food, they went running to their parents, who would come, pinched and cursed us the whole mile. But not to worry, we had our own revenge.
On our young ages, we had also learned that it’s easy to fool younger kids. Once, me and my brother sat together with my cousin looking at the dark attic. We tried to prevent him from going to the roof as we kept some of our toys there. So we started to tell him about the giant living in the attic, who had eye ball as big as stove and nail as long as a broom. The giant loved to eat children and so far there were two neighbor’s kids went up and never came back. In the middle of the horror story, my mom went up to the attic to collect laundry, so we told him that adults couldn’t see the giant and vice versa, but he was very hungry then and waiting for another kid to go up as the last meal he had was few months ago.
We could see our cousin eyeball swelled and swelled together with his mouth fell open. Since then, he treated us with great respect and of course, we enjoyed it.
Although simple, I remember there wasn’t a day without a new game. Although most of the games were wild and dangerous, we survived it. We, as in those twenty above who still had a chance to enjoy adventurous childhood. Nobody sued, nobody to blame if we went home with big wound on the knee and elbow. Of course there were consequences, I’m surprise to find that most of my friends around my age know the same brand of antiseptic. The teary-eye-hard-to-speak kind of feeling when the parents poured the antiseptic to our wound to ‘punish’ us. The worst, was the day after, when the bandage stuck to the wound and my mom would call other sibling, Go fetch the scissor, we need to open this up. It’s pure suffering, especially when we looked at the one who grinned from ear to ear, the scissor bearer.
I don’t have conclusion here.
_______________________________________________________________________________
In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television.
- Erma Bombeck.
Never underestimate a child's ability to get into more trouble.
- Martin Mull.
No wonder people are so horrible when they start life as children.
- Kingsley Amis.
Childhood is that wonderful time of life when all you need to do to lose weight is take a bath.
- Richard Zera.
Don't tell your kids you had an easy birth or they won't respect you. For years I used to wake up my daughter and say, 'Melissa you ripped me to shreds. Now go back to sleep'.
- Joan Rivers.
