March, 2003:
growing up

Osnat had a horsie, a gray horsie very sweet,
She asked me that for her, the horsie I would keep.
"Hold onto it well, that it won't get lost,
Because this horsie of mine is the most."

Someone, undoubtedly a parent, once remarked that the best toy their children played with was an empty box. I've brought quite a few large boxes home, and the kids are had many hours of immense pleasure playing with them. The obvious advantage of the box is that it allows for unstructured imaginative play. But there's an additional, less frequently recognized, advantage - once they've become "used up" and no longer attract children, boxes are easier to throw away.

Boxes or no boxes, kids still want toys - items with which they play, sometimes for unlimited hours of pleasure, sometimes for only a few days until they become relegated to an inaccessible shelf, perhaps waiting to be passed on to younger children in an extended family, or to neighbors, or saved for grandchildren, or simply forgotten. Osnat, from a well known Hebrew children's song, apparently grows out of her many playthings, but we, the adults who watch her grow, continue to be attached to them.

Judging from the amount of toys that find their way into a household, some must most certainly get thrown out, though I can't seem to pinpoint just when this throwing out occurs. And the problem becomes that the longer we hold onto them, the harder it becomes to part with them. Even if we don't remember why we saved them, we convince ourselves that there must have been a reason.

I offer here an almost random sample. These aren't the biggies - the Monopoly game, a Barbie doll, a special stuffed animal. Parting with those may well be an emotion-filled event. But even the little, and highly forgettable, items somehow resist being parted with.