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Some of those things I wanted; the microscope, chemistry set and telescope were “expensive” - my father being a construction worker was in some years laid off and out of work around Christmas and my mom was a stay at home mom, so they simply couldn’t afford them. I think I was in the 4th grade when all I got for Christmas was a Parcheesi and Yatzee game, a cheap knock off Barbie and wool hat and scarf set – not that I’m complaining – I understood then and even more so now as an adult and still we still had a great Christmas. But frankly I was a bit afraid to ask for some of the things that I wanted like erector sets and Tonka trucks and Match Box cars even in years when we were better off, not because my dad would have a problem with that but because my mom would had a tizzy fit and said “those are boy things”.

I vaguely recall having a baby doll when I was very young but not playing with it all that much after the age of 4, it bored me as I recall. One Christmas I did get a Malibu Barbie with a few outfits but no Malibu Beach House like my best friend got so I made my own. I got two sturdy card board boxes and built my own two-story Barbie Dream house. My dad gave me a bunch of carpet and linoleum tile samples to play with, I “borrowed” one of his exacto knives that I used to cut the carpet and tile to fit and to cut out doors and windows and some carpenter’s glue, I used construction paper and crayons to fashion wall paper, used all sorts of things including pieces of scrap lumber to make furniture and used crayons and construction paper make brick and shutters for the exterior. I also made some Barbie clothes out of scrap material. And I had a lot of fun doing that, a lot more fun than actually playing with the Barbie.

But I was probably a weird kid. I was the kid who at about 13-14 years old, after donating my old toys and cleaning out my closet, decided to re-do and rearrange my bedroom to make my bedroom “more grown up”. But instead of just moving stuff around, I used a carpenter’s measuring tape and measured the dimensions of my room including the placement of the door and windows and electrical outlets, measured my furniture and then got some of my dad’s graph paper. I converted the measurements I took to scale to fit the graph paper grid using a scale ruler, drew a scale “blue print” of my room on the graph paper and cut out my furniture dimensions to scale on construction paper; all so I could try out different arrangements first before moving anything. I even drew a few interior elevations and colored them with colored pencils to see what paint color and new curtains and bedspread colors I wanted. This kept me busy for several days and actually worked out really well. My mother was more convinced than ever that I was just plain weird. My dad however was quite impressed : )

I know I had Barbie dolls, but my favorite one was the Bionic woman doll. Because I wanted to know how they implanted things in her (of course I didn’t really think of it as implanting then) and how that made her stronger.

I had the Barbie house, but how boring is that when outside I had real live moving critters I could interact with.

When I hit highschool I was introduced to my first computer, chemistry, biology, and algebra and I was in love.