The Duffer

by Ian Robinson        Nov/Dec 2002

DUFFER ……..use your imagination

By Ian Robinson  

     One of the kids wants a Slide n' Ride for Christmas. The Slide n' Ride is $24.99, is on page 845 of the catalogue, and is an inflatable yellow polypropylene doughnut that looks as though it would pop like a birthday balloon the minute it whams into one of the tree stumps that dot the hill where I take the kids tobogganing. Sure, I could take the kids to the hill without the tree stumps, but I figure a little danger is good for them. Builds character.

      When I was my son's age --five-- in the winter of the year of Our Lord 1963, I, too, wanted something very much like the Slide n' Ride. Of course, I wasn't stupid enough to ask for it for Christmas, because in 1963, you'd never even consider blowing a Christmas wish on something like that.

      You just went out back into the alley and found an old car tire or tire tube leaning up against somebody's fence and took it to the hill and had a grand old time. And it didn't cost $24.99 either because you were sort of stealing it. (Although my attitude, then as now, is that if it was that damned important to you, don't leave it lying against the fence in the back alley where I can get to it.)

      Buying something like the Slide n' Ride was also unthinkable because, from what my older uncles tell me ---I was only five, remember ---- in 1963, for $24.99 you could get a bottle of rye, a semi-respectable looking hooker, an all-night room rental and still have enough left over for a carton of smokes and ham steak dinner for one. 

     But I digress.

     The tire was free unless you stole it from crazy Yonko, who lived down the alley from us in Timmins. Steal from him and you might wind up paying some kind of price, usually an ass worth of rock salt from the business end of Yonko's .410 shotgun, the same weapon he used to defend his summer truck garden from the depredations of the young Vikings who surrounded his home, who used to consider it a point of honour to rob him blind before harvest.

     (Note to young people: In 1963, you didn't have to register your guns. And it was pretty much considered OK to shoot thieving kids in the ass with shotguns if you first poured the lead shot out of the round and replaced it with rock salt, which would hurt like hell as it dissolved in your torn up buttocks. The only way to deal with it was to hurry the process up by sitting in a tub of hot water, which would make the salt dissolve more quickly. And once your ass healed up your mom would take a stick or something and whale the hell out of you. Not because you were such a bad thief you'd tarried long enough at the crime scene to give Yonko time to shred the seat of your school corduroys with a round of rock salt and now she had to buy a new pair and did you think money grew on trees?)

      But again, I digress.

     Yonko was head rink rat at the arena and every neighbourhood kid hated him because he chewed tobacco and was half blind, which meant that he used to spit on the top of your head if you weren't careful. He also yelled at us a lot and said we'd run out of ice time during the Saturday free skate when there was really 10 minutes left. Plus he spent a lot of time semi-hammered on the home-made apricot brandy he made in his basement, so even if he did notice you standing next to him at the rink, he might still hit you on top of the head with a mouthful of warm tobacco juice, by drunken accident or drunken meanness.

      Ah....sweet childhood memories.

      Also in this year's Christmas catalogue, for $44.99 ----the 1963 equivalent of twin hookers, two bottles of rye, etc. ---is the Barbie Twist n' Fold Sports Car Tent. Now my girl is 14 so she's beyond that and, frankly, if the boy ever asked for Barbie anything he'd be shipped off to military school faster than you can say, "No son of mine is gonna grow up to slow dance with other fellahs in the English department at Queen's University while writing incomprehensible monographs praising  the work of justifiably obscure Nigerian poet/playwrights."

     But again, I digress.

     From the picture, the Barbie Twist n' Fold Sports Car Tent on page 848 looks just like a cardboard box that somebody painted wheels and stuff on and then sat in. Now, when I was a kid, if you wanted something like that you --- wait for it ---just got a cardboard box and some freaking paint.

     You sure as heck didn't go spending what, for most people, is better than a morning's wages on it.

     On the next page, there are a wide selection of "play tents" that cost up to 70 big ones. Again, back when I was a kid, you'd take a blanket off your bed, drape it over a couple of chairs you got from the kitchen and you had yourself a play tent. I mean even in today's dollars, 70 bucks gets you two bottles of really good bourbon and a quarter gram of British Columbian agricultural product.

      Or a good pot roast and two bottles of wine.

      Or 84 cans of the real cheap beer that they're selling in the liqour stores these days at $4.99 a six-pack.

       If I go slow, on 84 cans of beer, I can get handsome and bulletproof at least seven times.

       If I go fast, on 84 cans of beer, I can get married twice, enter a rodeo, conceive three children, get a HOME OF THE WHOPPER tattoo on my upper thigh and acquire four years prison time--all over the course of a long weekend.

       Trade that kind of character-building, life-defining experience for a play tent? Don't think so.

       Next page of the catalogue, Harry Potter stuff. For $60, you can get a cape and a wand and round geeky glasses. Let's see, back when, I wore the round geeky glasses all the time and you wanted a cape, you just knotted a bedsheet around you and for a wand, well....can you say "stick?" I knew that you could.

        Page 860, some kiddie sing-along microphone stuff. Let's get this straight. There are parents in this sad, pathetic world who are voluntarily purchasing something to AMPLIFY a child's voice?

        Don't think so. Not in my world. And certainly not for $24.99. In my day, you wanted to be heard, you shouted.

      Page 881, a toy vacuum cleaner. Being pushed by a boy. Now that's just wrong. Even if they're free, you don't want that.

       You know what you won't find in the catalogue? The kind of stuff little boys really want.

       I know what boy-kids need for Christmas this year, but there ain't much of it in the catalogue. Sure there are some toy soldiers, but they aren't real toy soldiers. They're called ---get this---World Peacekeeper Set.

     That's right. World PEACEKEEPER Set.

     Memo to toy manufacturers: Warriors cool. Peacekeepers? Peacekeepers are the wimps who stand there and let the Rwandan genocide take place, got it? Warriors are roosters. Peacekeepers are like capons. And if the word capon is unfamiliar, let me clear it up. A capon is what you get when you cut out the part that makes a rooster row. That makes a rooster strut. That makes the chickens roll over and say, "Give it to me big fellah." That's right. That part.

      Some might say, THE part.

      To be fair to the catalogue, there's some Hot Wheels, which are cool, and some Air Hogs, which are ultra cool.

      But you could leaf through the pages of this --or any other kiddie toy catalogue-- until you grew old and died, and you wouldn't find anything that could put out somebody's eye. Nothing sharp. No BB guns. No chemistry sets. Nothing that blows up or goes kaboom. And a bunch of stuff that replaces inner tubes and blankets and cardboard boxes with pre-fabricated fantasy.

     I know what boy-kids and girl-kids need for Christmas this year, but there ain't much of it in the catalogue.

     I think it's called an imagination.

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