Comment: Let Go, Dammit

Farewell to Fisher Price

There are certain times in a parent’s life when defeat must be admitted. You know, the whole “you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole” thing. (Sidebar: Wasn’t Sarah Jessica Parker so much cooler when she was a geek on “Square Pegs?” She’s so airbrushed and emaciated all the time now, it bugs.)

What I’m referring to is my children and their relationship to Fisher Price Little People. And no, I’m not talking about the crappy ones currently made that are all cutesy and generic. I’m talking about Fisher Price…Old School. (hereafter described as OSFP)

For those of you who are old enough to remember (or just avid eBay shoppers) the OSFP contained a whole universe in which to dive: there was the yellow-roofed house (a classic, which I sometimes had my little people living in when it was placed on its side; very Dada, no?) and the barn with the moo sound every time you opened the door; the village with its little traffic lights and dentist’s office, and mail for each and every store. There was also an A-Frame house, a hospital, an airport, an airplane, a parking garage, a school house the likes of which are not seen anymore, a school bus and, the piece de resistance, the castle. Oh, I loved that castle. With its drawbridge and moat and dungeon and secret hiding place behind the staircase. (I bet J.K. Rowling played with OSFP when she was little.)

I loved this stuff and played with it, whether accompanied by others or not, for hours on end. And this went on for years. Even as tweenagers, my best friend and I made a VHS video (shut up, I know I’m old) of the little people’s General Hospital-esque adventures. We got pretty heavily into same sex couples, single parents, high speed car chases and affairs.

But the point of all this? My mother, bless her Canadian heart, saved ALL of our OSFP toys for years and years, and finally was able to bestow them on her grandchildren, my kids.

And they could give a crap.

Seriously, I keep waiting for them to fall madly in love with the toys and occupy themselves with them for hours on end, like I did. But they didn’t. And they don’t.

The ONLY building my daughter takes any interest in is the castle, and that has more to do with her current princess fetish than her love for all things O.S.F.P.

I’ve waited for two years now, along with the toys, and have just watched them gather dust. And now we’re moving across the country, and I don’t really want to pay a buck a pound to move things nobody uses anymore. So I’ve started…giving them away. It’s painful, and I don’t want to talk about it okay, but…that’s how it is.

I wanted my kids to love what I loved, to do what I did. I want them to have the fun I had.

But they’re not me. And I’m not them. And that’s where the square peg lesson comes in.

I can’t expect my kids to be like me just because they came from me. I need to let go.

And I’ll need to keep letting go every time they say or do something that I don’t agree with, or wish they wouldn’t do (as long as it’s not harmful to anyone else, of course) and that’s going to be the hardest thing we as parents are going to have to keep doing over and over for the rest of our lives.

But maybe I’m not just saying goodbye to the new and crappy Fisher Price that’s mass-marketed and stupid and ugly and nowhere as fabulous as the original (not that I’m bitter). Maybe I’m not even just saying goodbye to my childhood (obvi), but to my children’s innocence, too. They’re already pretty clear about who they are, and they know what they want.

And that's not up to me.