Personal History - Favorite Toys

What were your favorite toys and what were they like?

Dolls

I had a lot of rag dolls, even into my teens. My mother wouldn't allow Barbie dolls, but I did get some more traditional dolls that wore international outfits.


Didn't matter. They all ended up naked anyway.

My husband gave me a big blue teddy bear when we got engaged that I still have in my closet today.

Rocking Horse

This wooden or plastic rocking horse, tied to a large metal frame with springs stretched to each end, made the best toy ever. I'm lucky I didn't crack my head open, trying to push those springs to their utmost. I would try to make the horse's nose touch the ground in front of me, and then lean back as far as I could backwards, to make him 'sit'.

Eventually I grew too heavy for my horse. A very sad day.

Bike

My seventh or eighth Christmas went down as the most amazing, as well as the saddest. We got bikes for Christmas, my older and younger brother, and me. At last, transportation! Something other than just my feet!

The only problem was, my father wanted to go out and learn to ride bikes that day - on the snow and ice of winter.

We went to the elementary school playground down the street, and I was terrified. My feet couldn't reach the pedals, and I knew I would fall if I tried to ride my bike that day.

My older brother, who was 9 or 10 at the time, took off riding right away. A couple of pushes from my dad sent him on his way. My younger brother, on a smaller bike, also rode that day.

But I didn't. I refused to get on the bike, and my father yelled at me in frustration, until I teared up. I went home unsuccessful, walking my new bike the whole way.

But I didn't give up on it. I eventually grew into it instead. When my brothers would take their bikes out and ride, I followed behind them, sitting lower on the bike than the seat. It wasn't the most comfortable ride, but it helped me gather my courage and eventually learn to ride from the seat level.

Video Games

This new thing called video games started becoming a thing around age 10. First, arcade games sprung up everywhere, but we couldn't play them as often as we wanted because...well, broke. Most of the time.

Then Atari created home games. My dad bought a machine and our first set of games when I was 12, and it fascinated the entire family, but my brothers more so than me.

We played Pong, essentially two sticks and a little square ball that went back and forth, like table tennis. Then the games quickly grew more advanced. There were chances to win badges for high-score playing, and I won a couple of badges for Space Invaders and some other game I can't remember now.

After that, I lost interest, but my brothers and my dad went on to one new game system after another. Just didn't catch my interest the same way it caught theirs.