Toys

My mother always told us that paint on anything probably had lead (especially if it was painted red) and we shouldn't put it in our mouths, so we didn't. However, there was that one Christmas we hung one of those cheap, red, mesh stockings (still love these) to close to my baby sister's crib and the next morning she had red dye all over her face from putting it in her mouth. My mom freaked out! We got in trouble and heard horrifying stories of what could happen to Andie, brain damage, blindness, allergic reactions and death. YIPES! Nothing happened to her, she's now editing books in NYC. We played with Fisher Price Little People and seems to me they were the perfect size to choke on. We were told never to put them in our mouths or we'd choke and then DIE. I received my first FP Little People set at age two and still have it, little people, furniture and all. Never put them in my mouth. Ever get hit in the head with an old metal Tonka truck? It hurts! Turns into a huge welt and then bruises up, bad. I cried hard, my brother got yelled at, spanked, was told that doing such things could cause severe trauma to the head, coma and death! We grew up learning that you played with toys the way they were meant to be played with. If you didn't you could get hurt, you could sustain a severe injury and die. Our toys were never recalled or banned. We still have those deathtraps too. Our mother was a bit on the dramatic side to drive a point home but it worked.


Remember Super Elastic Bubble Plastic? We were never allowed to play with the stuff but it intrigued me. Most Wham-O stuff did. I only played on a slip and slide once in my life. It was at a slumber party and it wasn't what I had expected. My mother was right, you could fall wrong, break something, like your neck and die. I got a bruised arm and my elbow hit the ground in that funny bone way, OUCH! Not fun. Well, the fun came watching other kids take near fatal falls and laugh at them. I digress. So, my mom thought it was too dangerous to play with the plastic. What if you ingested what was in the straw?! You could die. So I've never done Super Elastic Bubble Plastic. In fact, to this day, I don't think I'd ever play with Super Elastic Bubble Plastic (no chance of something like that being around) because it still seems rather precarious.