It seems to be a veritable digital deluge when it comes to the most popular Christmas presents this year.
Whether it’s a toy for an excited wide-eyed little one or an excited wide-eyed old(er) guy (like me), these days seem to be dominated by electronic gizmos that have buttons and flashing lights and screens and stereo sounds and that can do things I wouldn’t have been able to even imagine when I was building stuff with my wooden Tinkertoys and bolting together metal creations with my Meccano Building Set and shooting little plastic cowboys with the plastic bullets from my hand-cranked Gatling gun.
Now it’s laser beams, talking robots, virtual 3D video games, and iPads and iPods and iPhones and iGiveup!
Even babies are interacting with digital dolls that play music and high-tech mobiles that teach the alphabet and multi-tasking electronic “activity tables” that ensure they will have a PhD by the age of 10.
Yet I can remember being blown away by the first (very expensive) calculator I ever held in my hands (in high school believe it not) and discovered that you could do the most amazing things. Like the smartest ones in the class (the girls) found that if you typed in 07734 and held it upside down, it spelled “hello.” Which of course meant that the boys eventually figured out that if you entered just the 7734 part, and held it upside down it spelled “hell.” A constant source of amusement for guys in math class, most of whom spent most of the class trying to figure out how to take it up a notch and spell dirty words with upside down numbers.
The point is, while I’m the first one to go gaga (not the Lady one, just the regular old-fashioned gaga) over the miracle of modern technological gizmology, I sometimes kind of miss the simpler times when a Slinky was a genuine marvel of engineering and Silly Putty was the most remarkable hunk of mind-blowing goop.
These things still are marvels, and still popular thank goodness, but mainly as novelties. Just like when we got to say “Wow, you’ll never believe what Santa brought me this year! A PING PONG BALL BAZOOKA and a LOG CABIN TOY BUILDING SET!”
And in those days, you could ambush your sister with a deadly accurate ping pong ball from across the room, and the Log Cabin logs were — get this — made of real, genuine actual wood!
For example, kids don’t seem to ask for train sets for Christmas anymore.
These days, many Christmas lists plead for a Remote Control Mini Cobra Helicopter with Built-in Camera and Double Rotor Gyro Stabilizers that can be controlled with a cellphone. I have no doubt that today’s typical eight-year-old can fly the Mini Cobra with no problem, but what’s a kid that age doing with his or her own cellphone?
The special year I got my genuine Lionel train set, I thought — no, I knew — I was the luckiest kid alive. It consisted of wide silver tracks that formed an oval about four feet across (15 grams metric), a big yellow ‘modern’ engine that pulled four very cool cars, each the size of a pound of butter.
Thing is, this train was unlike any I’ve ever seen before or since. One car was a flatbed with an actual rocket launcher on it, and another car was a big red boxcar whose sides and top could be dismantled. On the floor of the boxcar was a spring-loaded metal arm that you could load (not unlike a mouse trap), and then put the boxcar walls and top back together so that it looked like any ordinary red boxcar on a lucky kid’s train set.
You would unhook the rocket launcher car from the train and line up the engine and the boxcar and the caboose on the rails, and crank on the electric “transformer” box that sent the train lumbering around the track. (I can still smell that distinctly wonderful smell of hot oil and melting wires).
You would then position the rocket launcher car several kid-lengths away from the train, raise up the aiming arm of the launcher just so, pull back the rocket on it’s spring and when the train rounded the track at just the right spot you’d press a metal lever and launch that plastic projectile at the boxcar. If you got it just right, the rocket would fly through the air and nail the boxcar, which would trigger the mouse-trap arm release inside and with a satisfying KERWHACK! the whole thing would explode in a million pieces. Well, three large pieces actually, but it was no less dramatic as the big yellow Lionel kept right on chugging around that track, so powerful it barely noticed the explosion it was attached to.
I still have that terrific train and I still dig it out once in a while.
But it occurred to me long ago that it isn’t necessarily the Christmas presents that make it all so special, it’s the Christmas presence. The charisma of the time of giving and receiving, the family moments and memories, the friends, the lights, the music (except for Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer) — the feeling that Christmas brings that rings true for now and for always.
Maybe you’ll get your own version of a beloved Rocket Launcher Train or a Mini Gyro Helicopter this year whether you’re a little kid or an old kid. And I especially hope you find the Christmas Presence you are looking for.
Merry Christmas!
Harley Hay is a local freelance writer, award-winning author, filmmaker and musician. His column appears on Saturdays in the Advocate. His books can be found at Chapters, Coles and Sunworks in Red Deer.