Our perceptions when we are children change when we “grow up.” I can remember the last time I got toys for my birthday. First, I must explain one thing. My parents gave into whatever was on my mind. I didn’t like getting toys (or the dreaded clothes) that I didn’t want so I always took my parents to the toy store and picked out what I wanted. There was very little surprise involved in the process. It was the way I liked it. I was in Junior High at the time of my last “toys birthday.” I went to the toy store determined to buy or have my parents buy toys and did just that. I was a little wiser in my purchases than I had been in the past. I actually economized on the gifts. I knew I was only getting so much money for gifts so I got the smaller Star Wars Ewok vehicle instead of the larger, more expensive Ewok village. I remember thinking at the time, “I refuse to give up buying toys just because I am older. I don’t want to grow up. I want to be a kid forever. Get your wand away from me, Time!” I played with the toys so little even a year after I had gotten them that you could barely tell I had taken them out of the boxes. That little kid inside me refused to believe that getting older meant doing without toys. Toys were my life. What was I going to do with my time? This was why teenagers are so crabby. They stopped playing with toys and had nothing to do. I was becoming a crabby teenager! If this continued, I would be one of those cranky adults sitting around worrying about bills all day. The teenage years were the years that people waited to receive their bills. Your childhood was gone and toys were a forgotten memory.
As we grow up, the idea of what constitutes a toy changes. Legos and building blocks were my favorite toys as a child. Later, computer games took over my interest when I got a little older. I was a creative child and am still a creative adult. If I could create something from scratch, I could entertain myself for hours. The next step in the toy evolution is action figures. They are usually set in a certain pose. Some assembly may be required, but there is no creativity involved in building the toys. You can be creative with scripting the actions that the action figures would take, but much of the creativity of older toys gets taken out. Creativity gets suppressed as we get older because we don’t allow ourselves to be badly creative. If you ask children about specific aspects of their creations, you will get creative, but not necessarily logical answers. You need to allow yourself to create beyond sense and logic. Eventually, you can take the creative ideas and organize them into logical stories and story ideas. Every author, screenwriter, and actor was a creative child that didn’t let his or her creativity die.
When talking about toys, you have to make the distinction between girl toys and boy toys. Girl toys are boring and stupid and boy toys are interesting, creative, and great. Not that I have a bias about what toys are better, but if you look at Legos and Barbies next to each other, the difference becomes clear. Legos are a 100% creative toy where as a Barbie was an action figure with such lofty aspirations as finding a man (Ken) and getting married so she can live in the Barbie mansion. You didn’t build a car or build the house she lived in, you or your parents bought the car and house. Life was just as mundane as everyday life. The creative script of Barbie’s life had more resemblance to a soap opera than a creative exercise. My wife always complains about having to buy toys for boys. “Boys toys are so boring,” she usually yells as she rolls her eyes. Admittedly, some boys only want toys that they can destroy. I was not one of those boys. Girls also didn’t all aspire to have Barbie marry Ken. Some girls built their dollhouses, built the furniture in the house, and created the fashions for the dolls. There are creative boys as well as creative girls. For some reason, girls lose the creative aspects of childhood more than do boys. It doesn’t have to be this way, but you definitely see more men in creative jobs than women.
Creativity doesn’t have to die when we stop playing with toys. Some of us manage to keep our creativity into our adulthood and still play with toys. I still receive Legos from my wife at Christmas because I still like playing and creating. The toys I play with now are more sophisticated and expensive, but I still enjoy the simple toys the best. Give me a piece of paper and a pencil and I can create anything and everything from scratch. My creativity today has everything to do with the toys I played with as a child. If you are giving toys to someone or receiving toys this Christmas, rejoice in the fun and creativity that is growing in the world. Toys make the world a better place. Teenagers make the world a crabby toyless place with no fun or creativity. Give a teenager a toy today and make the world a better place tomorrow.
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