How I Learned To Love Animals And To Ignore My Parents At The Same Time

When I was a kid, my mother said, "There will absolutely be NO PETS IN THIS HOUSE!" Here, then, is a list of all the

Pets I Grew Up With

1. Gerbils: Xavier and Myrtle

2. Mice: Shasta, Pepsi, and Millie

3. Several Turtles whose names I forget

4. Dozens of tanks of tropical fish, including a piranha

5. A few garter snakes

6. Hamsters: Peanuts and Amy

7. Dog: Dusty

8. Guinea Pigs: Cory, Toby, and Eric

9. Chicken: Elton

10. Bunny: Shiloh

It is worth noting that every single one of these pets lived in the house, except the bunny, who had a deluxe pen outdoors. Not one of these pets made it into our home with my mother's prior approval or her permission. They merely showed up and she could do--and did--nothing about it. My father merely shrugged his shoulders and smiled, knowing his involvement would be nil. Also, my mother immediately liked all of them with the exception of the snakes and the mice, which brings me to a story that is very telling about my mother.

When the mice showed up, Mom was supremely irked, and she made my sister Susan and I promise to keep them upstairs so that she didn't have to see them. As usual, we had no idea how to take care of these pets, and we didn't realize how easily mice can escape any enclosure, no matter how small the opening provided. The mice getting loose was an hourly occurrence, and my mother started threatening to suck them up in the vacuum. One day, she saw Susan's mouse, Millie, the most Houdini-like of the three, scurrying along the livingroom baseboards as we were getting ready to leave for school. "That's IT!" my mother screamed. "NEITHER OF YOU GIRLS IS GOING TO SCHOOL UNTIL YOU FIND THAT MOUSE!"

Millie enjoyed the run of the house for most of the day.

Can You Come Out To Play?

Everyone is making a bigass deal out of these Zhu Zhu pets, the motorized hamsters that became the must-have gift last Christmas. Crappy toy, in my opinion. What can you really do with it? No staying power there. Reading that article got me thinking about my own Favorite Playthings from my childhood (way back before computers and microchips but well after dinosaurs and log cabins). Here's my list of

Top 5 Toys

1. Spirograph
2. Etch-A-Sketch
3. Play Doh
4. Fun Flowers Thingmaker Set
5. Crayola 64 Crayon Box

These toys all had major staying power because they were interactive and produced something. They weren't necessarily--bad word here--educational--but you did more than just wind them up and watch them.

Spirograph: This was the most incredible toy. I'm sure someplace some engineer thought altruistically, "I'm teaching kiddies about parabolas and geometry and sine and cosine" or something mathy like that, but I never thought that. I just picked out a disc, stuck a colored pen in the hole, and started carefully fitting the teeth together of disc and stationary part. It was awesome the way a beautiful snowflakey-looking shape suddenly appeared. I used to sit and do this for hours. Once for Christmas I got a huge pen with about two dozen different colors of ink in its barrel that could be used interchangeably. It made Spirograph 24 times more exciting.

Etch-A-Sketch: Man, this thing also kept me busy forever. I got so I could draw almost anything on it, but my favorite thing was a nice, neat house with windowboxes, front steps, and even a house number. I was always curious about how it worked, but my dad told me, so I never had to break it open. I still love this toy, and both my kids always had one. Truth be told, I think I played with it far more than they ever did.

Play Doh: Let me tell you, I played with this stuff far longer than is probably normal or healthy, and the fact that my little sister is five years younger than I am prolonged my Play Doh Playtime, a fact for which I am immensely grateful. I especially loved that simple extruder toy, The Play Doh Fun Factory. I used to sit and make a ton of pretend baked goods, plates of pretend restaurant entrees and desserts, you name it. I was especially proud of of my Play Doh Fruit Plates.

The Fun Flowers Thingmaker Set: This toy would never fly in this day and age, for it reached temperatures of probably five hundred degrees, used bare metal plates without a safety covering, and the Plastigoop had more poison/toxicity warnings on it than a medical waste facility. Basically, it was a nightmare. But I loved making the rubbery little flowers and faces and leaves and then putting them on florist's wire and...having them. Bunches and Bunches of them. My mother detested cleaning up the oily residue of the Plastigoop from the carpet and table and floor (during one memorable summer, she even forbid me from playing with the Thingmaker on the concrete front porch), but she never seemed even remotely concerned with the dozens of burns I got on my fingers. Moms back then were way less hovery.

64 Crayola Crayon Box: Not only was this The Big Box Of Crayons, it had a built-in crayon sharpener! This was THE BOX OF CRAYONS. I got one of these for Christmas every year because it made My List every year. Sometimes, I got one for my birthday. Holy Crap, I loved this box of crayons. This used to be The Biggest Box They Made. There were days I would take the crayons out and just organize them in the box: you know, put all the greens together, all the oranges together, all the blues together, etc. I knew the names of the colors like the saint names in the prayer of the Eucharist at mass: apricot, burnt sienna, thistle, sepia, bittersweet, magenta, cornflower...ah! What the Crayola people have done to some of these classic colors is shameful. I still find coloring in a good coloring book very therapeutic. Good luck with that, though--finding a good coloring book. Most are shills for cartoon characters. Sad.

You know what's next, Stuff readers: your turn to take that stroll down Memory Lane and identify your favorite childhood toys. Let's see what you toss into the playpen.