simple pleasures

 

Do you remember balsa wood gliders and rubber band planes? Do you remember how carefully you poked the pieces out of their sheets? Did the planes actually fly, back then, or did we just have such fun putting them together and making the effort that the results, however mediocre, seemed sublime?

I still love balsa planes. And slinkies, and marbles, and jacks. String games and jump rope. And all those simple, ancient games... well, not slinkies, we know how old those are. The game of marbles is over 3000 years old. Knucklebones, played in ancient Egypt and all over the world wherever it was civilized (and i'm sure well before that), was the precursor to our rubber ball games. String figures were made by indiginous cultures the world over, sometimes in competition, sometimes as illustration to a song or story. Jump rope was first documented in Medieval times.

Nintendo, eat your heart out.

Yesterday we went to one of the parks of my childhood and tried out the planes. The Kid was thrilled, for about fifteen minutes or so, and then he wanted to go play on the equipment. But I was bathed in the diffuse, kind light of nostagia and happily fiddled and futzed with the planes, long after the boy had lost interest in them. Thanks to D. for the brilliant idea. It was great to feel like a kid again, and not just the mother of one.