Come back at Christmas, we’ll talk about Mr. Jingeling.
I wish I still had this. I’m the one sitting in it in the picture. Dad built it, it had a real gasoline engine, and I was absolutely fearless in it.
Here is Bear on the day I got him. It was my second Christmas, so he’s gonna be 36 this year. I still have him and he sits on my nightstand. All of his shiny plush fur is gone except for a small patch inside one ear. His nose was replaced at least once as he now sports a black crochet ball that my Granny made him. I use to drag him around by the nose and it came off alot. She must have sewed it back on at least 20 times under my watchful eye. He has multiple “surgical scars” as well where he had to be stiched back up. That dog in the picture, I don’t even remember. 
Awesome thread BTW.
My mom still has possession of my childhood friend, “Doggie (II)” – threadbare, missing an eye and an ear, one foot dangling and about to fall off. Still holds a special place in my otherwise cold, dark heart. I’m plotting on how to liberate him from my mom’s clutches… but my brother is on his own to spring his “Bun-Bun.”
I went out and bought a bunch of re-issued Micronauts a few years back, just because I loved those things as a kid, and mom (again) threw all mine out (!) when I went to college. I bought extras, too, so as to corrupt my nephews with them when they’re old enough.
Ha, that’s great! You might enjoy this. When I was an itty bitty kid, I had a little wooden boat that I’d play with during bath time. However, the captain once took an unwise journey up the raging torrent pouring from the tub’s spout; the ship and crew got stuck in the spout. My Dad knew nothing about plumbing and we couldn’t get it out. For years, water poured from that tub’s spout in two separate streams, and I spent most of my bathtime trying desperately to retrieve my boat from its watery trap. It had been stuck in there for over five years when, at age 8, I finally got it free, looked into my hand and saw…half a clothespin.
(The explanation I got was that I’d wanted a toy boat, they couldn’t afford it, so Mom gave me the remnant of a broken clothespin…what the heck, it was useless to her as a clothespin.)
I went in the Army straight out of high school. When I was overseas, my parents moved into what had been my grandmother’s house a few hundred yards away. They sold everything I owned in a yard sale. Bastards.
Stuff like this reminds me of one of my mother’s stories:
When she was young, she had a dolly she loved. Grandma was sick of the doll, and probably either gave it to charity or just threw it out one day while my mom was at school.
Mom came home and asked where her dolly was. Grandma said “She didn’t like living here anymore, and so jumped out the window!” :eek: Especially alarming, once you know that they lived on the tenth floor of an apartment building.
I still have a couple of my Mattel “Liddle Kiddles”, which were all the rage in about the mid-1960’s, IIRC. I also have my troll dolls and Skipper doll (much banged about and ravaged).
I wish I had my Barbie Dream House, which was a cheapo, teal-colored cardboard carrying case filled with cheapo cardboard furniture and accessories. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world, but I don’t think the cardboard stuff stood the test of time very well.