Losing track of time is a happenstance which slowly becomes a habit when one becomes older. And because it’s closely related to forgetfulness, the two reinforce each other such that oftentimes it becomes the rule rather than the exception. But it does have it upsides – the surprises, especially the pleasant ones, when one remember ancient doses of playfulness in one’s childhood. Just make sure you don’t strive to remember the bad moments.
I was busy choosing toy cars for my three-year old son last week end when my hands accidentally grabbed a pouch of marbles. Yes, the plain, shiny, colorful, marbles of youth – how they got in the bottom of a mound of toy cars escaped me. But there they were as I allowed the glass balls with multi-colored flames to roll over my fingers as I always did more than 40 years ago. I swear it has been ages since I last saw a marble, … I mean the one we use to play with before. There are marbles now … usually in the home decorative fixtures section of malls – uni-colored, placed side-by-side with potpourri … but not the “jolen.”
A lot of things have changed with toys, too. For some reason or another, my son loves cars, and will not touch any other toy in the store but cars. Luckily, he has not yet developed the habit of choosing the most expensive ones, but he seems to already understand better quality … or durability if I may. And all the toy cars you want today, you can buy in the store, mostly made in China, and remote-controlled, too, at such an outrageously cheap price. Wouldn’t last a month, though, but you can continue playing with them as an ordinary toy cars.
The reason I really feel the difference is because I could not remember having these when I was young. Maybe there were, … in the city, but I grew up in a sitio of a non-poblacion barangay in a town 100 km from the provincial capital, and in that time and place, toys are self-made, not by us but by fathers, of course. I have such a toy truck and a toy “jeep,” heavy play pieces because my father carved them both from huge blocks of hardwood. How long it took him to finish, I have no idea. But what I do remember is that while I played with those before I entered school, they were still there when I was already in college. It’s only when we transferred and we left that rural place that I forget what happened to those two wooden toys.
I had a riding horse, too, bought in a store called “Villamor’s” when I was yet a toddler. My mother told me they have to buy it because I wouldn’t stop crying and leave the store without it. I don’t remember that, of course, but the important thing is, it actually still exists, in one piece, after almost half a century, and my son rides it when we go home to the province. The durability of the olden days!
Back to the marbles – I bought 5 pouches! Enough to fill a jar, and I half expected my wife to say, “Have you lost your marbles?” Frankly, I wouldn’t have minded. I love marbles ever since I was 5 and started playing with it, and now at 49, I still love rolling them in my fingers. Maybe in the last 40 years in-between, I lost touch with the glass orbs, going into more serious things in life – high school, college, love, work, relationships, politics, urban and transport planning, airports now, etc., but the sheer happiness in seeing them was still there. Maybe I just didn’t see marbles anymore, and assumed they became as extinct as dinosaurs. But found them I did, in a mall in Mactan and I now have a jar-full above my closet.
And now I remember more. Does anyone know where we can buy that wide rubber band we used to attach to Y-shaped-cut tree branches to make sling-shots with?