Family Daze
Keeping track of a toy can become a puzzling affair
By Debbie Farmer
I don't know about you, but sometimes I can't help reflecting on the little mysteries of life. Oh, I don't mean such things as the purpose of the Great Wall of China or how the pyramids were constructed or anything like that. I'm talking about more intellectual things, such as, say, how to keep track of toys with multiple loose pieces.
This hasn't always been such a big mystery. Back in the days when my children were babies they were happy with simple, one-piece toys that I could store easily.
Not anymore. Now that they're older their toys come with about a bazillion pieces. Sometimes more. And, let me just say, no matter how hard I try, I can't keep them all in one place longer than three minutes. Four tops. I'm not sure why this happens. Perhaps it's because I'm disorganized. Perhaps, it is because there are too many for one person to keep track of. But I think the real reason is that something mysterious happens to toys once they are set free of the box, that makes them not want to go back in. Clearly, this is the only explanation.
Take Legos, for instance. To people with children, this is the code word for "tiny- plastic- pieces- that- scatter- to- the- farthest- regions- of- the- house- and- stab- you- on- the- bottom- of- your- bare- feet." Call them what you will, but I say it was no accident that the day my son got out the Lego soccer field he got for his birthday, the only thing left in the box was the tiny plastic ball and a Cheetos from somebody's lunch. Oh, I eventually found one of the nets inside the CD player, a red flag sticking into a hunk of Brie cheese in the refrigerator, and one of the goalies floating in the cat's water dish.
One time, in a fit of organization, I bought several giant plastic containers with airtight lids, then stored each toy with all of its pieces. I must say this idea was brilliant, except for one thing: After the toys were taken apart and put away, I had absolutely no idea how to reassemble them again.
I wasn't too worried. The day my 5-year-old son wanted to play with his racetrack, I figured I could either 1) pull the container out of the closet, say, "Here you go, Honey!" and then hide in the laundry room until he gave up; 2) go to the local toy store with my camera and take a picture of the racetrack box, or 3) make something up as I went along.
Let me just warn you right now that if you're the type of person who can barely manage to change the channel on the VCR, do not pick No. 3. If you do, you will spend all afternoon putting together a racetrack that looks more like a big, plastic spider.
"Mommy, that's not right," my son said, as I forced the final piece in place.
"Sure it is." But I could tell he could see right through me.
Between you and me, I hoped that would be the end of it and he'd move on to doing something with fewer pieces, but then, as luck would have it, he insisted on looking for The Car. And any fool knows that The Car is the one and only vehicle on the entire planet that can run on this particular kind of track, but, due to a cruel trick of nature, looks exactly the same as all of the other cars in the world.
Needless to say, we never found the right one. But the good news is that, while we were looking, I found a round, plastic gadget with a hook on the end. Obviously an escapee from the secret place underneath the sofa.
"Why are you carrying around a piece of plastic?" my husband said, tossing it into the trash can.
I thought about responding with a diatribe that you never can tell if a seemingly innocent piece of junk could be, say, the crucial piece of the water heater, or the missing gizmo on the garage door, or even the one unreplaceable part that holds the upstairs in place. But something told me he wouldn't understand.
"Oh, no reason," I shrugged. But when he wasn't looking I fished it back out and slipped it into the hardware drawer.
Just in case.
Debbie Farmer is a frequent contributor to the Saratoga News.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
