Every now and then, as we get older, something triggers a
childhood memory and brings back all the joy and pleasure we had attached to
that memory all those years ago, which makes us wonder if those joys and
pleasures can be found again if we only had one of those things just like back
in the good old days. These thoughts are
dangerous, and should be resisted at all costs, lest we be reminded once again
that time waits for no one.
And this is not to bring back other childhood memories, such
as the time I found myself staring at an electrical outlet with a hairpin in my
hand, wondering what that little slot in the plug did, and how deep it
was. Such memories can be shocking and
are best left undisturbed.
So it was that I found myself perusing the latest edition of
the Duluth Trading Company catalog that arrives all too frequently in our
mailbox since they got their hooks into us, and found, deep in the back pages,
that they had revived one of my childhood favorites, Roc’Em Soc’Em Robots. These are two plastic robots about six inches
tall that stand forever nose to nose in a plastic ring with their dukes up and
a permanent sneer on their spring-loaded ratcheting faces, controlled by two
hands on the plungers that slide out from under the ring and work the hands and
fists of the belligerent bots. A direct
hit with an uppercut, the only punches these pugilistic paragons can deliver,
to the chin of the opposing puncher will pop the head up on its extended neck
and signal a victory of some sort, though often the enemy will land the same punch
at the same time, leading to a vociferous argument about who struck first, especially
if your opponent is your 11-year-old granddaughter who has just beat you for
the eighth straight time.
The Duluth Trading Company, for those of you fortunate
enough to have avoided their grasping clutch, is a small company in Minnesota
who put out a catalog that shows how they are all just a bunch of good ol’ boys
and girls from the Country, and all their foreign-made clothing and related
stuff is very high quality (and price), just the solution for a problem you
didn’t know you had, like Plumber’s pencil holder, or pants like a cheap hotel,
with no ballroom. I will grudgingly admit
that I have a drawer or two full of their stuff, which really is pretty good,
as does my wife.
In the back of that catalog is always a few pages of
interesting tools and handy gadgets, and that’s where I found the robots. It’s interesting that, in this Amazonian day
and age, the robots are one of the few products that Amazon does not carry,
probably for the same reason I discovered after I had paid thirty bucks for
mine.
Because that is the dirty little secret of many of our childhood
memories: We have the attention span, in
cultural terms, of a gnat, and an idea that sounded fabulous when it was first
derived quickly loses its flame when exposed to the cold wind of the actual
experience. Roc’Em Soc’Em robots, like Slinkys
and Hula Hoops and so many other fads, get boring real fast. Once you have assembled the kit, which is
easy, and admired the simple mechanical mechanism that takes no batteries,
needs no oil, but does need an opponent to become something other than an exercise
in self-flagellation, you are left waiting for the kid to come home from school,
so you can demonstrate the superiority of the good old days once and for all.
Your enthusiasm is almost guaranteed to take a dive after
she comes in and sees the new toy, says, “Cool!”, and then proceeds to beat the
plastic pants off you with ease. I
should have known. Today’s children are
the second or third generation that has been raised from infancy surrounded by
electronic devices, and quickly demonstrate a practiced efficiency with them
and an innate understanding of how to make them work that is difficult to
grasp for someone who remembers dial telephones with numbers that start
with a word. An eleven-year-old kid
already has five or six years of joystick experience, so we have nobody to blame
but ourselves.
As for the robots, they are already gathering dust on a
shelf while waiting for White Elephant status next Christmas. Our families started this tradition years ago,
where you search around your house for some useless item like a Singing Bass
plaque, or the Norwegian Briefcase (a pair of tightey-whiteys with a handle sewn
into the waistband), wrap it up in tissue paper (newsprint works), and put it under
the tree with the rest of them. The
wrinkle is that, as each “gift” is unwrapped and displayed to much groaning and
laughter, the next person in line (you draw numbers) has a choice between one
of the still wrapped packages or any of the already revealed items. The best stuff changes hand several times
during the course of the evening, and the loser of the chosen piece gets to
pick again, with often hilarious results and comments. It beats the heck out of Christmas shopping,
not to mention the chance to return an idea to the dustbin of memory where it
belongs.
So the next time you stumble across a blast from the past,
and are handed an opportunity to go there and maybe do that again, think twice,
then a third time. Sometimes those
things belong right where you left them, in the past. :-{)}
