Things I Didn’t Buy 41

I found some adorable Japanese children’s books.

This is a cute old teaching clock toy. Front and back.

And a Care Bear from the 1980s.

Things I Didn’t Buy 7

I went to an estate sale and some shops and saw a few interesting things. First up, this cool scale.

Here are a lot of cute little bottles.

Remember Beanie Babies? This is where they end up: in boxes at an estate sale…no one wants them.

I just thought this mixer was interesting.

Chinese Checkers game.

This Kraft wood box I considered buying—it’s awesome. But I resisted…

And this just was sitting in a shop and it amused me: a paper shark attacking a boat.

Things I Didn’t Buy 5

Here are some children-related items I thought were interesting (although never had any intention of buying). First up is this sad little one-eyed stuffed animal that could be the Japanese TV mascot Domo.

This caught my eye because I remember the Care Bears. I don’t recall much of the actual plot from the Care Bears, but I’m pretty sure this cartoon did not stand the test of time, and if I were to watch it now I would be bored to tears. But nonetheless, I was intrigued by this 1980s toy.

This nested Care Bears toy perplexed me. They’re set up like Russian nesting dolls, where there’s a smaller shape inside of a smaller shape. The part that I thought was poorly thought out was the fact that they’re shaped like Russian nesting dolls, with the slightly curvy womanly shape, but instead of making each shape into a bear (which would totally work with their little potbellies), they put a scene on it. That’s not fun at all; they feel less like dolls and more like containers.

I thought the design on this Bible Game was interesting—very 1960s.

Finally, this TarePanda was fairly large and in good condition. It’s pretty cute…but totally unnecessary.

TV Money Notebooks

When I was a kid, my parents tried to get my brother and me to read more and watch television less. I was probably around seven or eight years old when they instituted “TV Money” (where my brother and I had to pay to watch television). TV Money came in thirty and sixty-minute increments, and my dad designed them using family stuffed animals instead of American presidents for the faces on the “money” bills.

A Bear by Any Other Name

In Anne of Green Gables, Anne says: “I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.” And she’s right on an emotional level. Names help give us identities; hearing that a ten-year-old girl’s name is Brittany or Barbara or Banana all give me different mental pictures (whether true or not), assumptions are made. I think that’s probably why naming anything seems like a daunting task to me, because it feels like giving different names will help create different identities.

I recall having this naming quandary when I was about seven or eight years old and I got a big gray stuffed bear as a birthday present. The inevitable question everyone asked was, “What’s its name?” And I replied, “I don’t know. I have to think about it.” I didn’t want to name my bear anything that was too obvious, like Smokey. I struggled in naming my bear because I wanted it to be special and fitting. So until I could figure out what her name was going to be, I gave her a temporary name: Bear-Bear. It wasn’t creative at all, but I thought I could come up with a better name eventually. [Pause.] It was a temporary name that quickly became permanent.

On a following birthday, I got a big stuffed panda as a birthday present. Instead of thinking of a unique name, I instantly named her Pan-Pan (short for Panda-Panda). I had already set the precedent in naming stuffed animals for exactly what they were, and I was too lazy to figure out anything better. And my brother followed this naming convention when I gave him a small stuffed zebra as a present, naming him Zeb-Zeb (short for Zebra-Zebra).

Perhaps it seems silly to worry about giving a stuffed animal an interesting name (as it’s just a stuffed animal), but really it’s a reflection of the fact that names matter. Names stick with you and it becomes a part of who you are, just as I never could change Bear-Bear’s name to anything else because she was Bear-Bear.