Toys and Crackers

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20995, 23 December 1939, Page 15 (Supplement)

Toys and Crackers

HE grown-up world is really very like the child’s world, a place of dreams and nightmares, of flo\v#s hopes and wintry disappointments, of pleasures madly even if only momentarily enjoyed, of pains endured. Children and grown-ups alike suffer from anxiety and frustration. Perhaps the chart of happiness in early life is more sharply defined; the high points even higher, the drop quite

abysmal; but we must all, at times, make good our escape from dull reality, or—even worse—a reality that isn’t just passively dull but acutely distasteful, and take refuge with our toys and crackers. For the child there is magic in the arrival of a parcel. His excited fingers tremble and fumble with the string, then he sees his name, probably in large block letters, and, though perhaps he cannot even read, there is something about the shape of these solid markings that he knows means “ ME.” Then of course the brown paper is stubborn and he still doesn’t know what is inside. It may be a Birthday Book from Aunt Dorothy (oh dear!) or coloured chalks from Granny (which wouldn’t be too bad), or it might just possibly be that unspeakably beautiful and tormentingly desirable model of a real green Sports Car, complete down to the last tiny detail, that he saw in a shop window last week and has not since been able to expel from his waking dreams. So is the little girl with her cherished doll. She loves its smiling baby face and frilly baby dress, or its pink, pouting, young lady’s mask, framed in golden curls strangely at variance with its long black lashes. She treasures this inanimate poppet who shares her life; who sits propped up opposite her at meals drinking imaginary tea, and eating imaginary drawing-room sandwiches, while her owner munches thick bread and butter and finishes her mug of milk. Think of the hearty young man with his first motor bike. The face that he raises from peering into the engine is somewhat oily, there is a black smudge across his nose and his brow is positively furrowed with the effort of concentrating on how

AVENUES OF ESCAPE FROM LIFE !

to get just three more miles to the gallon. But that does not weigh against his naive enjoyment. Have you ever noticed in one of those shops of gardening tools that show a proud window in the main street of small country towns, a thinnish woman, wearing a well-cut, shabby suit, expensive low-heeled shoes, a shiny nose and an expression of pure ecstasy, as she handles the newest kind of stainless-steel trowel, which, by the mere turn of a screw, miraculously turns into a heavily pronged fork ? She has her toy all right. Her garden and every flower that is in it. Only a Different Kind of Toy You’ve seen her opposite number smartly hatted, dripping with mink or sable, exuding a very expensive scent with a very expensive name, seated at the counter of any of our more exclusive jewellery establishments. The setting is entirely different, the flavour of the small scene is entirely different. But as the assistant skilfully demonstrates the ease with which a large diamond pendant unscrews to become a pair of delicate diamond clips, Woman Number Two is wearing the same expression of blissful greed with which Woman Number One confronts her trowel-fork. “Man cannot live by bread alone,” and how odd it is to meet the occasional intensely serious, heavy, humourless creature who thinks not only that he can, but that he ought to! How wrongheaded, how perverse he is to want to cut out of life these trivialities that make for so much pleasure ! Nobody grudges to children the hoop, the ball, the dolly’s .bath, the Noah’s ark, all those darling old things that keep on appearing in shop windows year after year, always tricked out in some alluring. modish guise, never quite the same as last year. Why then should the grown-ups not have their share ? Why should they avoid Christmas, which is the yearly explosive recognition of this necessity to have and to enjoy bits and pieces ? Christmas is a lovely and exhilarating day. True, lonely people are lonelier, sad people in ont

way become a little sadder, but they cannot help catching a little reflected glow from the general happy atmosphere in which everyone shares. The excited anticipations of Christmas Eve resolve themselves on Christmas morning into established facts. When the canvas stocking is torn open and all its charmingly idiotic contents have been examined, there are still the big parcels to be dealt with. There are still presents to be exchanged, the child anxiously watching its father and mother to see if the proper expression of surprise and pleasure is going to be registered on the parental face, the parents equally anxious to capture in their memories the first quick reaction to the Right Present given at the Right Age. Crackers have a different function. It is their pleasant duty first of all to attract the eye as they decorate the well-laden table or weigh down the glistening branches of the Christmas Tree, which, v/licr the curtain is drawn, stands revealed in all its glory of coloured lights, knobbly packages, shMijg ornaments, and above all, an inconsequent fairy slightly askew at the top. But that is all preparatory. Their real business is to provide just one fleeting second of glamour, ell the more intense because it is so fleeting. Here it is not the little object so fatly bulging the middle section of the cracker that is important; what matters is just that one second of purest winged pleasure as the cracker is pulled by two hot hands. It’s all nonsense, of course, but what a valuable part nonsense plays in one’s life ! Have you ever at a crowded party met someone to whom you talked for perhaps two minutes ? You said nothing important, you did not even catch his name, but you talked the same language, you exchanged, perhaps, one small joke or one bright line, and then the contact was broken, leaving you a little stimulated, a trifle richer. One gay tinsel stitch had been added to (he embroidered fabric of your life, and you would rather unpick inches of well-sewn experience than touch this tiny silver thread. These experiences are the adult equivalent of the child pulling the cracker. There are appropriate toys for every age from childhood to the grave. Let Thomas beat his drum while Michael and Joan play a hectic game of Snakes and Ladders and you fiddle with the knobs on your all-wave set. Let Grannie try out her new very fat knitting needles. Let me arrange the ornaments on my mantelpiece while Mary rocks her baby doll to sleep.