PRE-SCHOOL:
A bag of Playschool wooden blocks. I am told I chewed on the blocks at the hospital. (I had teeth and hair when born – when presented to my mother, I am told she screamed out “What is it?”) I’ll keep those blocks forever.
A real piano for my first birthday. What was my mother thinking? I was only a year old! My mom says that I liked playing a toy piano so much, that she went out and found me a real one. I think she confused piano playing with crawling. Two young cousins are now using it.
A couple of suitcases of Lego. The collection started as a pre-schooler, and grew, and grew, and grew throughout public school. I eventually gave them to a cousin.
PUBLIC SCHOOL:
A library card. What an adventure going to the library was! Every couple of weekends, the whole family would pile into the car and head downtown to the small limestone building, where my sister and I would stand in awe at all the books, knowing that with the hot little cards in our hands, we could each have any three of them. After a while I even learned to read. What a life-long love affair that card began!
A red CCM coaster bike with 24" wheels. I received it for my commute to kindergarten a couple of blocks away, and rode in the woods with my friends until the frame collapsed in grade 4. Red really does go faster, you know.
A subscription to Classics Illustrated from my Aunt Betty, the coolest aunt in the world! She was a nurse who travelled the world, and had the most wonderful stories to tell when she visited.
A Webster’s Collegiate dictionary from my Aunt Lucille, my other coolest aunt in the world! She was an artist who also travelled the world, and who also had the most wonderful stories to tell when she visited.
A film developing and printing kit, received for my sixth birthday, and treasured for years but gradually upgraded. My grandfather gave me his Graflex 35mm, and my dad let me use his twin lens 2 1/4".
The 1967 Encyclopaedia Britannica. I read myself to sleep nightly with it. Nothing like the good old Encyclopaedia Britannica to make a kid fall asleep. It is in storage now.
A telescope, also in storage now. Anything space related in the ‘60s was hugely popular – my dad and I spent an entire weekend re-wiring the Marconi TV so as to watch the ‘69 lunar landing.
Balsa and tissue model planes, which with rubber bands even flew!
A canoe paddle, which still have in storage. Having one day drifted out into the Bay of Fundy’s Oak Bay on an old oil drum wired to some driftwood, my mom figured that it would be best if I had a way of getting back in. (As a child, she and her sister used to swim with the tides the way most kids would take a city bus, so she never worried that I might drown or freeze to death. I think she was a fish.)
A couple of Tri-ang trains and about a hundred feet of track. My dad built a table for me out of half a dozen old doors, so I was able to build a model railroad. The trains, track and buildings are now with a friend’s daughter.
My first canoe, a red fibreglass Neptune, which was stolen within my sight as I was jogging into town to arrange for a shuttle. Four guys in a silver Mustang hard top.
A National Geographic subscription. My window on the world.
HIGH SCHOOL:
Addidas SLs and Nike waffle running shoes. I ran a lot – a couple of hours each day, plus to and from school. The shoes actually made a difference for competition, but I’d burn through a pair every few weeks – cheap stitching. I wish I had saved a pair for the memories of beating the ‘cross-town bus.
A classical guitar for which I saved all summer prior to high school. Today it is at the foot of my bed, and sounding better than ever.
A pair of cross country skiis (broken by a friend on the Mt. Smokey Ridge Run a few years ago – darn tree), a down sleeping bag (my ex-SO is now using it – she’s trying to get her beau into kayak tripping), and a sheet of closed cell foam (you have no idea how popular this stuff was when it first came out – still have some of it).
A Scientific American subscription and a New Yorker subscription. My window on the world was expanding.
A pair of Addidas spikes for meets, and a pair of Addidas rugby boots (gave the spikes to a team mate at the end of high school, but still use the boots for power kite flying).
A beat up old Chestnut wood and canvas canoe. I picked it up for $100, and spent a summer rebuilding it, but it was worth the effort. It took me down rivers across Ontario – now there’s freedom for a kid: a classic canoe and tens of thousands of square miles of wilderness. A friend now uses it for taking her daughter camping. I hope the boat brings them as much joy and adventure as it did me.
Another piano (a Heintzman from a piano teacher who had too many). A friend’s pre-schoolers are happily pounding on it these days. I’m plotting to do away with my sister to get my hands on her grand.
A Pearl drum set. A friend’s daughter is POUNDING on it these days – my friend hates me.
A tent with mosquito netting (YAY! No more bugs!).
And then in grade 10, the ultimate mass consumer durable which everyone simply had to have: a car. I came across a an excellent condition 1969 4-barrel 427 Toronado for $800 (the cash came from a small grass cutting business in which I subcontracted out the work and took a “cut”). So there I was, with a canoe and camping kit, and car to carry it. Having recently discovered girls, and more importantly, that girls also liked wilderness paddling, I set out for the woods whenever my wallet could afford it. Killarney, Algonquin, Temagami! Great friends and wonderful adventures! Morning lakes calm as glass with fog lifting off them, and the Chestnut slicing silently through, then later in the heat of the day dancing down through the rapids and hauling through portages, with the rich smell of the forest around us, then composing tunes about the campfire in the evening while sharing our suppers, and finally bundling with sweethearts at night – a new feeling and quite a wonderful one. At the time I figured that life could not get much better, and that I was the luckiest fellow in the world. Know what? I was right.
)
