Playtime

We have boxes full of Stuart's childhood toys. Matchbox cars and antique trains with hardly a scratch on them. He was such a gentle child.

Not me. All my stuff ended up in the trash. When I was a child, I played with my toys like Toy Story Sid. I gave my dolls haircuts (crew cuts, really) and pierced their ears with straight pins. Poor little darlings. I drew on their vinyl faces with pen. Once I put a plastic handpuppet on a lightbulb, just because. It gave off a lovely smoldering smokey smell as he met his doom.

My children have inherited my destructive gene. They build Barbie catapults out of K'nex and fling Island Barbie off the island. There are dents up near the ceiling of the little girls room that attest to this creativity. We have had Barbie crewcuts and amputations at the knee.

You might think there is only one way to play with a puzzle. Put it together. Take it apart. Put it in the box. Nope. Not if it is a puzzle of the map of the earth. There's the problem of tectonic plates, you know.

I think they've created the apocolypse!