I spent the afternoon cleaning our playroom. Granted, we are lucky to have enough space as to indulge ourselves in a room designated just for toys, but therein lies the problem; and the danger.
I feel it would be in my best interest to say publicly, that if I ever mysteriously go missing, before you file a missing persons report or call 911, check the playroom closet. There’s a good chance I may be the victim of a Lego tsunami or stuffed animal assault. When it comes to the deep recesses of the crumb, Lego head, missing arm infested undiscovered country at the back of the toy closet, anything is possible. I have seen the unseeable: random doll parts, amputated Buzz wings, a Lightning McQueen stripped of paint, debris either from the first world war or spewed from the depths Mount Doom. Actually, that last one was just an unfinished corndog someone had discarded, leaving the few remaining bites, stick impaled, to harden and wither at the bottom of the doll bucket.
I have to say that I am not really a toy person. I am too much like my father:
“Go play outside!”
“You don’t need toys, you have each other!”
“Explain to me the point of 6,000 Barbie shoes, you don’t even wear your own shoes!”
When we first got married, both my husband and I swore that we would be toy minimalists. Our children would have wooden blocks, a doll, some playdough and maybe a skateboard. But somehow, when that first child arrives, and you go shopping as a parent for the first time, everything changes.
Suddenly, toy shopping is a transcendent experience -- when you walk down that glowing aisle of factory-molded goodness, and realize: you don’t have to ask for anything, you are the parent now, and these shelves and shelves of pink and blue hunks of battery-operated plastic are here for you, to fill that void, to make your child happy, to compensate for that toy you never got. Suddenly, you are the toy-fairy, the benevolent giver of all things that make unnecessary noise -- and the power is intoxicating. This is why you see new parents walking out of Target with $300 worth of toys, even though their baby can’t even hold his head up yet. Because those toys really aren’t for the kid. And, when that baby does learn how to lift up his head and move around, he’ll just eat the box.
Toy manufacturers are brilliant.
Thankfully, this aura of enthusiastic inexperience fades quickly -- usually sometime after the first credit card bill -- and Tyler and I are not under that spell anymore. But, after 19 years and 5 children with Christmases, birthdays, holidays, Happy Meal treasures, and of course, all those "dentist, doctor, school carnival, mean kids, bad hair day" compensatory toys, we now have more junk than we ever intended.
The other thing I have realized about toys is that when used properly, they quickly become mismatched, strewn about, colored on, thrown, jumped on, skipped across the lake, left out on the tramp, and of course, chewed by the baby. Why does this happen? Because creativity isn’t pretty. Toys are meant to be used, learned from, and played with; not stored nicely in a box like Mommy would like. The consequence of happy, well-adjusted children is a playroom that looks like death.
Just today I counted 17 stuffed animals, hunkered down in dark corners and under beds, hiding from the impending onslaught of April’s creativity. I found them huddled together in groups; no doubt rehearsing reassuring stories and words of survival and faith as they wondered at their lost plight and dreaded their eventual, terrifying rediscovery.
My instant urge (not really being a toy person, as I mentioned) is to throw everything away -- leave nothing that could possibly offend, brake, get lost or be stepped on. My favorite tool when scouring the playroom is the black garbage sack of sorrow (I’ve watched Toy Story way too many times...) But as I picked up a doll that had been thoroughly loved, her pacifier missing, her clothes mismatched, her feet tatooed with marker, I heard the slightest whimper, “Et tu, Brute?” And I knew I couldn’t throw her away. So I cleaned her up, readjusted her clothes, wrapped her in a blanket and set her down in the now corndog-free doll bucket.
Because that’s the way with toys. They are kind of like children. The instinct to provide them a happy, clean play environment overrides the immediate irritation of obvious -- and sometimes obnoxious -- disarray. My playroom now looks as it should: clean, organized and free from all food remnants. I can’t say it will still look that way tomorrow, but at least I got in one clean day. Ultimately, the truth is, both the toys and the children are worth it.
But, seriously though, if I ever do go missing, check with the strange, menacing, stuffed squid thing.
He creeps me out.
He creeps me out.
