Birthdays were THE most exciting time of the year for me as
a child. I looked forward to that one day when I’d get brightly wrapped gifts,
no matter what size they were or how colourful the wrapping. Which brings me to
present day, when just sometime back I picked up a birthday present for my
little niece, being the doting (young) aunt that I am! At the toy store, as I
looked for something for my niece, I went through a new experience. Being
attended to by a patient sales person, I was distracted by this incessant rant,
coming from a tiny tot, who kept insisting on looking at all the new toys, with
little interest in what his father had to say about behaving himself. While my
left brain was occupied with dealing with this tantrum, the right side of my
brain was even more surprised to see another family coaxing their little kid to
choose between the bigger toy gun and the louder mythological, musical, weapon.
The only selling point of the toy for the kid, being – which will be more
powerful. Having chosen my gift and waiting for it to be wrapped (in Barbie
pink paper, as annoyingly recommended by the sales person, much to my
annoyance), I looked around the toy store. All I could see were big, noisy toys
in about 80% of the space, with books placed on one wall. It’s not entirely
wrong to play with large-sized toys or the ‘musical’ ones, what I failed to comprehend
was, whatever happened to those smaller, yet equally enjoyable, cars, dolls, Lego
sets?
On an instinct, I asked the salesman if they had HotWheels
and how much they went for “these days”. Now as a kid, with a sibling, I
remember having some cars and truly enjoying my time with them! Perhaps on
seeing the glint in my eye, the sales person showed me several models off the
lowest shelf, when I saw the ’70 (s) Toyota Celica, an ordinary looking yellow
sleek beauty. It did not matter to me that it was probably the smallest item on
sale at the store, or that none of the kids in that store would even glance at
it but, as I walked out of that toy store, while silently thanking my stars for
my childhood, I said a bigger thank you to that little girl for whom size
really did not matter!
