Toying Around

An Essay by Stephen Geez
www.StephenGeez.com
Art by Dizzy

Much as our neighborhood girls liked playing with their dollies, we boys rather found ourselves seriously into cars.

I mean Matchbox Cars.  Or Hot Wheels.  I could list more brands, but you know the kind I’m talking about: they’re still around.

I was more of a Matchbox guy myself, but we didn’t discriminate against lads who favored the products of other toymakers.  If you brought some cars—or trucks or vans or cool emergency vehicles or even a hearse—you were encouraged to join in.

What we didn’t welcome was playing like, well, like girls.  Now, I’m no expert about how today’s youths toy around—that is, whenever they deign to unplug their virtualities to engage the physical world—but back in the day (read: way back) we understood that girls tended to prefer acting out human interactions: faux dating, house-playing, fashion-modeling, career-tasking, or even (ugh!) imaginary tandem spree-shopping.  Give any girl a molded-plastic kitchenette, and she could not only spend all day pretending to prepare and serve meals, but she would cajole other girlies into pretending to dine with her.

We boys took a different approach: rather than imagining that some make-believe Lance Lamedork was driving his Matchbox Car to rendezvous with friends for drinks and stimulating repartee about literature and current events, we preferred to direct our attentions toward designing and building the elaborately labyrinthine roadscape that numerous backstory-free, faceless drivers might find themselves navigating.

Think about it.  What’s the cliché about giving gifts to little boys?  They’ll likely feign interest as long as their four-minute politeness-spans allow, then set the expensive objects aside and build something out of the box.  Watch that same kid for half a century, and I guarantee he’ll still be figuratively building his aspirations from ever-bigger potential-unlocking boxes.

I also had a Lionel Train set, one of those Christmas gifts to “grow into,” really an excuse for Dad to, you know, help his toddling son “set it up,” maybe run it around the track a few times, then run a few more after the kid falls asleep.  Though I grew to appreciate that train set, I quickly tired of watching it go round in circles (well, ovals).

Then I discovered its true potential.

I started adding more track.  Hey, how about a few crosses?—and a switch or three!  Oooo, a tunnel . . .   Yes, I rode my bike to many a far-flung garage or yard sale, cheaply mining trainly treasure from those who never quite figured out that playing with locomotives is really about building the biggest, coolest, most-complicated layout that space and materials allow.

Some guys never outgrow that.  Eventually they reach the saturation point where bigger is no longer possible, so they focus smaller and smaller until they start finding truth in the details.  I mean, some world-shapers look forward to retiring as a chance to indulge just such a “hobby,” finally able to afford the time to hand-fashion authentic set pieces: crossing-gates that light and lower, trees that look so real you can smell them, maybe a mountain stream that spills down through a valley crisscrossed by old-style wooden trestles . . .   Now these old boys have the resources to get it just right.

Now they can finish what they started so long ago.

See, our youthful Matchboxing worked best when we could find a huge patch of malleable dirt in which to doze roads, build elevations, erect bridges, craft water features, and even—oh, my heart pounds at the very notion!—maybe even run some switchback train track through the countryside.  We would spend the day relentlessly bending the world to our will, even until dusk frowned upon us, fading light casting long shadows across our land, the proper vehicles positioned appropriately here and there even if they never actually vroom-vroomed along the roadways.

Some grownups watch toy commercials to look for gift ideas.  Most of us are amused to recognize new versions of our old stalwarts, and we’re amazed by “what they can do now.”  Still, even though society has progressed greatly in blurring gender expectations—an age when boys might aspire to model fashions even as girls grow up to drive NASCAR—we can’t help but notice the traditional skew still persisting in our world of toys.  The makers and market-targeters know who desires what, and they have a very good idea how and why the wide-eyed young recipients of those realistic little cars like to play.

So the next time you travel by car or train, gaze out the window; or if you board a plane, watch the world pass below.  You’re witnessing an ever-rearranging gigantic playscape, product of the imaginations of many big little boys, and more than a few ambitious, can-do lady-sized girls, too.

And next time you bark at some kid to put away his toys, look closer at the mess, then appreciate what’s really happening. 

It might just be a work in progress.

Vroom-vroom!

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