...but I haven't aged a day.
I was rummaging through a local antique store a few days ago looking for an old book to chop up (it's a long story I'll tell later). Our town has this gigantic antique mall--the largest in the state, or maybe even the world. It's in what used to be a K-Mart kind of store that dried up years ago and is now full of old dusty things vendors have hauled out and set up in so many different stalls, the whole place has to be partitioned by streets. I found my book on 12th Street or something, and on my way to the register, I nearly tripped over an old doll house. I swear it could have been mine when I was a kid.
A dollhouse just like this one was handed down to me by some older sisters. It was metal and had all the wall coverings and floor coverings painted right on it, and it had plastic furniture. I particularly remember a blue couch and a pink toilet. The one in the antique mall was priced at $62. I'm sure my parents didn't pay more than $10 for it, toilet included.
I have since learned that a Crissy doll can sell for as much as $75. If I hadn't colored mine with markers and cut up her hair that grew from a hole in the back of her head, I could put her up for auction on e-bay and make a killing. I loved my Crissy doll in her purple velvet dress, but I didn't take very good care of her I'm afraid.
I can also find my old favorite games at vintage game sites, and fortunately they aren't five times their original value. One of my favorites was The Inventors. Everyone playing was an inventor, and you drew cards to see what marvelous thing you had created and then played to get patents and to make your fortune. It had a complicated patent dispenser that spit out little metal clips. I loved the water wings and the air-conditioned rocking chair inventions--completely useless and doomed to fail.
My other favorite game was Masterpiece. Everyone playing this game was a bidder in an art auction, and you haggled over fine pieces by Rembrandt and Picasso. If nothing else, it was educational. I've been to a few art museums as an adult, and every time I see one that was on a playing card in my old game, I feel informed.
It's odd how you can lock into an age in your mind and never grow past it. Then you're shocked when you see your old things in an antique store, and you wonder how people could be so misguided about the passage of time. When my father's Alzheimer's had really taken hold, he would often think of himself as a young man and be dismayed at seeing this old woman (my mother) sitting next to him at the kitchen table. "Who the hell is that?" he'd ask because, after all, in his mind he was only 30. He couldn't possibly be married to this woman in her 70s.
In my mind, I'm OK with being 40plus, although I'm sure I look 25 and I often feel like I'm 10, sitting on the green carpet in my living room playing Masterpiece, brushing Crissy's hair with her purple plastic brush, and listening to my sister's Lettermen album on the hi-fi. Bidding on this one starts at 99 cents.
I was rummaging through a local antique store a few days ago looking for an old book to chop up (it's a long story I'll tell later). Our town has this gigantic antique mall--the largest in the state, or maybe even the world. It's in what used to be a K-Mart kind of store that dried up years ago and is now full of old dusty things vendors have hauled out and set up in so many different stalls, the whole place has to be partitioned by streets. I found my book on 12th Street or something, and on my way to the register, I nearly tripped over an old doll house. I swear it could have been mine when I was a kid.
A dollhouse just like this one was handed down to me by some older sisters. It was metal and had all the wall coverings and floor coverings painted right on it, and it had plastic furniture. I particularly remember a blue couch and a pink toilet. The one in the antique mall was priced at $62. I'm sure my parents didn't pay more than $10 for it, toilet included.
I have since learned that a Crissy doll can sell for as much as $75. If I hadn't colored mine with markers and cut up her hair that grew from a hole in the back of her head, I could put her up for auction on e-bay and make a killing. I loved my Crissy doll in her purple velvet dress, but I didn't take very good care of her I'm afraid.
I can also find my old favorite games at vintage game sites, and fortunately they aren't five times their original value. One of my favorites was The Inventors. Everyone playing was an inventor, and you drew cards to see what marvelous thing you had created and then played to get patents and to make your fortune. It had a complicated patent dispenser that spit out little metal clips. I loved the water wings and the air-conditioned rocking chair inventions--completely useless and doomed to fail.
My other favorite game was Masterpiece. Everyone playing this game was a bidder in an art auction, and you haggled over fine pieces by Rembrandt and Picasso. If nothing else, it was educational. I've been to a few art museums as an adult, and every time I see one that was on a playing card in my old game, I feel informed.It's odd how you can lock into an age in your mind and never grow past it. Then you're shocked when you see your old things in an antique store, and you wonder how people could be so misguided about the passage of time. When my father's Alzheimer's had really taken hold, he would often think of himself as a young man and be dismayed at seeing this old woman (my mother) sitting next to him at the kitchen table. "Who the hell is that?" he'd ask because, after all, in his mind he was only 30. He couldn't possibly be married to this woman in her 70s.
In my mind, I'm OK with being 40plus, although I'm sure I look 25 and I often feel like I'm 10, sitting on the green carpet in my living room playing Masterpiece, brushing Crissy's hair with her purple plastic brush, and listening to my sister's Lettermen album on the hi-fi. Bidding on this one starts at 99 cents.
Comments
I want my Fischer Price stuff back too. I loved those little people.
Just keep saying this. We are still young. We are still young. We are still young. Young people will look at you funny, but that's not the point.
Robyn, you will always be Scout to me, so no worries about getting older there.
I loved Masterpiece, too, but have you seen the prices on those paintings?
My parents didn't throw out my classic toys. Instead, they passed them all down to my baby cousin Elizabeth (Lizard-breath), who now has a priceless collection which she taunts me with each Christmas.
At least I still get to play with them, and if she ever breeds, they'll have a good home.
Dive, the Dorian Gray reference is perfect--my daughter just read that last year. Haunting. I love being immortalized in one of the greatest American films of all time.
I stuck sewing pins in the ears of my Sindy doll to make earrings but was never allowed to take the scissors near her hair.
I've never seen those board games, they certainly seem more high brow than Kerr Plunk! (Which we were never allowed as children so I bought it for my children. Now I know why we were never allowed it as children...)
ps, that deleted comment above was me. I could wring Google/Blogger's neck sometimes.
Oh, poo! Now I'm going to have to go on eBay. I MUST get Kerplunk for Christmas …
Oh, and Ants in the Pants.