second childhood

Looking at the collection of toys I’ve collected the last few years reveals a truth about myself, I hate to even admit. I’ve entered my second childhood.
First, it was plush stuffed animals. I said I wanted miniature bears to decorate the Christmas tree. So with children long past the age of stuffed toys, who else wanted the large plush animals I also bought?
Then it was the cloth dolls. I didn’t need any. I considered buying one. I ended up with two rag dolls and four or five bean bag dolls perfect for a small child’s hands.
I also could not resist buying a few of the discarded children’s books from Barton Library and sold at garage sales. Recently, I found a couple books I remembered reading as a child: “The Bobbysey Twins” and “Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.” The children in those books are unbelievably noble and good. Now I know why I finished each story determined to be a helpful, kind child.
Lately, my preferences have changed. My taste in children’s books now leans more towards Henry Higgins and Ramona with a sprinkling of “The Great Brain” series.
Now I am buying toys reminiscent of my own or of an older relative’s childhood. The most important factor is to not invest too much. I don’t want to have toys around that are so valuable that visiting grandkids are forbidden to play with them.
With that criteria we now have a wooden pounding board, stackable wooden telephone and stringing beads. Ironically our most durable toy of yesteryears was found more than 20 years ago. We paid absolutely nothing for it and very few children have ever had it in their possession long enough to play with it. It is a cast iron Model A car painted in orange with some kind of gold metallic finish to the wheels.
My husband found it inside the walls of our century old home in Indiana. During one remodeling phase, my husband pulled off the ancient plaster of the walls directly under a small opening to the crawl space over the bathroom. The bathroom was added after the original house was built.
Some long-ago chid, eater to play with a new toy, dropped it as they crawled in and out of the hole That was the last anyone saw of the toy for the next 40 or 50 years.
Since the car was lost soon after its purchase, the paint is only chipped in a couple places. A stain remains where a beam wedged it in place al those years.
My husband reveled in his find. He took it to a coupe of antique toy dealers who priced it at about 10 times the cost of a metal car in the store. As a cast iron toy it is rather impervious to breakage. However children crashing it into walls, other toy cars or running it over cement will knock off more paint so we put the car up on the shelf. For another 20 years the car remained out of the reach of children.
Then my second childhood began to descend.
I gathered up all the books, toys and orange car and arranged them on the library table in the bedroom where I will always see them. They are at eye level for visiting pre-schoolers and easily reached.
Now if I just would remember I bought them to share with the little ones who visit …


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