Toying With My Inner Child

owowowowowooooowww, my nerves are spooked. i'm devastated easily when told off once sharply, but 3 times in the recent past, and i'm at a pulplike consistency. it's like the wrestling ring -- 1, 2, 3 and i'm down for the count.

so let's play the regression game.

on sunday, i had to buy a green remote-control car (by request) for a tot i selected from our office gift donation tree. i considered this a more daunting task than filling out a dental insurance claim, making alphabetical filing folders for personal use (hello adulthood) and meeting a friend on a weekend for the purposes of being productive. more daunting than all of those things! you have daunte's inferno idea (i'll go a long way for a pun...some might even say too far).

the point is i got to go to the toy store. i haven't been to a toy store in over ten years, i believe. that's a rough guesstimate and probably inaccurate. it's either way longer than that, or i just have a bad memory and i went to a toy store last year and i blocked out the memory using a large creative license(plate).

upon trying to figure out where the nearest toy store was located, i somehow convinced myself that toy stores no longer existed. you can ask my friend tony. i actually called him up and asked him if toy stores still existed, and he said "just because you're not a kid anymore and don't go to toy stores anymore, it doesn't mean that toy stores don't exist anymore" which is a fair statement but somehow i had convinced myself i was right and he was being argumentative.

anyway, always of a helpful nature, he found me the address of a KB Toys, which i motored towards skeptically. and lo and behold, as if magic had pulled out all the stops just for me, right as i'm approaching the approximate location of the KB Toys, i see a huge Toys R Us by the wayside and i pulled over recklessly like a bad driver.

if toy stores don't exist anymore, how come there were suddenly two of them within the same quarter-mile radius? well, don't you see, that makes sense through its own lack of logic. the very nonsense of it makes it add up perfectly. anyway, on the way into the toy store, i saw a rainbow! my heart giggled a little.


if you believe, you will find a strip mall

so i entered this Toys R Us hoping they still make remote control cars, and i was not disappointed (i'm out of touch). i actually got my lucky 3-year-old kiddie a gas-guzzlin' remote control green humvee the size of a healthy-sized infant. the guy i asked for help looked as if he wanted to suggest i get a smaller eco-friendlier car for my 3-year-old gift recipient, but i think he was hesitant to shatter the unbridled pure excitement on my face.

i had so much of a time in the toy store. i oohed and aahed all over the place, totally playing the annoying customer who suddenly freezes in the middle of an aisle blocking traffic both ways to gurgle at a jigsaw puzzle. i did all the rounds though. i inspected the craziness that LEGO has come up with lately. i paid homage at the playdoh and potatohead shrines. i ogled the board games. i made small talk with the pull-string dolls. i complimented the 1000+ crayons set. i held and cooed at some stuffed animals. i got lost in the baby items section. and all the while, i dragged my giant remote control humvee around by the corner of its packaging.


i take it back, i do like painted smiles
photo courtesy of Flickr and moriza

i ended up picking up some presents for my 2 little nieces, and i suddenly realized why everyone else in the store had a cart. because toys come in the awkwardest most space-guzzling boxes of all time. i picked out 4 items total but trying to hold them all in my hands meant one would always end up not so subtly on the floor, and i would be poking someone's child in the head with a corner of another one of my selections, and not just any child either. one of the little girl specimens running around in a pink faux-fur coat, making calls on her "toy" cellphone, which by the way got way better reception than my own.

i got in line to pay for my 5 purchases (another one snuck into the fold), and the lines were quite well-endowed with parents knocking out their holiday responsibilities. the lady standing on line in front of me accidentally smacked me in the face with her purse while gesturing in excitement, knocking all my purchases out of my hands. a bit tired by this point, i just kicked them all into another aisle. i was having the shopping experience of my life! it was truly an errand to remember, especially when i had to stop to pick up gas for the lil humvee that could (and did) on the way home. you're welcome, kiddo! gas prices are high. i ain't settin' you up shabby.