All my young life I wanted an electric train. Not that I
thought about it every day, but I thought about it often. Certainly at
Christmastime I hoped, and I know I spoke of it to my mother more than once. I
never got one. Was I told that electric trains were not something girls could
have? Don't know. Perhaps I just figured that out later, based on my
experiences with "boys get everything; girls get to watch," trying to
find a reason for never getting one. My
older brothers never had electric trains either, but I don't know if a train
was something they ever wanted.
It may have been a money issue. Our family was big, five
children, and we weren't wealthy, although I never heard any talk about not
having enough money. But perhaps money was too scarce to afford expensive toys
like trains.
And there's the question of where you keep the train and
where you set it up to run. I can only think of setting it up on the dining
room table, but that would be terribly impractical. We ate at that table. And
we played ping pong on that table. I'm still amazed that our mother let us do
that.
Obviously, I'll never have the answer, no matter how much
guessing I do. I don't remember if my own children ever asked for electric
trains. I do remember hearing complaints about what so-and-so had. You know,
"Why can't I have that?"
Why I think of this now, I'm not sure, except that last
night was another sleepless night, and I do mean sleepless. That's what you do
on such a night--think, worry, remember. All sorts of things pop into the brain.
1 comment:
Hi Carol, Get yourself a little "N" gauge train. It doesn't take up much room, you can staple the tracks to a 2 ft by 3 ft board; then when you have sleepless nights, you can get up and watch your little train go round and round. It's a fun toy for us grown ladies who have always wanted a train to have.
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