About two weeks ago I watched “James May’s Toy Stories”, which almost brought me to sentimental tears and put a smile on my face at the same time. Watching the programme, I was trying to understand how I managed to be so happy as a child. But let me give you a little explanation.
I haven’t seen the whole series, but in those I’ve seen May was talking about construction sets and plasticine. And things you can make of it by following the instructions. Having been born in the late Soviet times, I can still remember my toys. I don’t know what might be an excuse for the manufacturers who produced them… Maybe it was quite a difficult time. But, speaking of Russia, you may randomly take any epoch at all – and it would always be “quite a difficult time”. Anyway, the toys. Or, more precisely – the constructors. For a little child, it was absolutely impossible to assemble the same thing you see on a picture. The first instrument you had to deal with in order to construct your plane or a boat was a file. Not the one that is used for fingernails, but the bigger one, looking more like a saw, actually. Every instruction contained an unforgettable and unequivocal note which said that if some parts of a constructor do not fit each other – all you have to do is to shape them with a file. Of course, if your parents are not completely insane they would never give that kind of tool into your 4-year-old tremulous sticky little hands, so they would do the job. But that was only a half way through the nightmare.
I had no idea how to swear those days, but if I did – I’m sure I could have easily become an author of an enormous dictionary of the obscene Russian language.
That was a real disaster because I can’t remember a single detail of a constructor that would fit another one effortlessly. Or, if it did, sooner or later it would turn out that this very detail doesn’t even exist on the manufacturer’s instruction. Or is missing at all. So, managing to make up something of all those details that wouldn’t fit each other, missing, or already broken – was quite an intellectual conundrum, requiring diligence, calmness and creative search.
I now even think that, perhaps, those constructors were made this way accidentally on purpose. And indeed, what’s the point of following the instructions, when a clever child might stretch imagination to come up with something that wasn’t even nearly claimed by the manufacturer? And, speaking philosophically, It was also a very good school of life. It taught me some important lessons. Never take things for what they seem. Never expect an effortless and routine work even when given clear instructions. And for God sake don’t shift expectations and be ready to get disappointed. And yet, stay calm and diligent. I’m actually getting more and more convinced it was all purposely invented by some power structures or something. You’ve made a nuclear icebreaker “Lenin” from what was claimed to be a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress? Well done, my child, your country needs you.
And then there was plasticine. I don’t know who exactly had the effrontery to call it “plasticine”, because that thing was almost as soft and pliable as a brick. You couldn’t possibly do anything with it unless you put it in some hot water for 30 minutes or so. But then you had to be very quick and agile to build something from it because in a very short time it would get back to its original “alive” characteristic of a stone. And it was also described as “multi-coloured”. But the palette was a bit… I think if the Fauvists had been given such a palette they would have rather committed mass suicide than used those colours in their paintings.
We had soft toys, too. It is now hard to tell what it was made of, but If you’d dropped your teddy bear on the floor, you could make a hole in it and pretty much surprise your neighbours down there.
Sometimes my diligence and good behaviour were rewarded with some beautiful and shiny capitalistic toys, because my father would go abroad once in a while and bring me some dolls and… plasticine! Plasticine of colours a bit more brighter and various than dark brown, light brown and middle brown.
I am, of course, slightly exaggerating in order to entertain you, but by the higher standards – it isn’t very far from the truth.
Things changed when I was 9, and my family moved to Taiwan. Then, fallen into the clutches of an Asian Tiger, only a week after we moved, I predictably ended up with a dozen of vulgar pieces of plastic called “Barbie”, kitchen sets and bedrooms for all of them, hundreds of teddy bears not made of iron, countless trains and cars that do not fall to pieces when you breathe on them and might be used not just once and, of course, video games.
But interesting thing is that it wasn’t too long before I found myself a bit bored with all that luxury. Everything was just annoyingly perfect. Everything worked fantastically fine. And it suddenly turned out that there’s no place for me anymore. There was nothing I could do with my hands or inquisitive mind. Well, except from disassembling my toys to see what’s inside and how it works. So I started to study Chinese characters instead.
You probably think what might be the moral of this story. Well, there isn’t one. I loved all my beautiful and properly working toys bought in Taiwan. On the other hand, having stood the test by the incredible Soviet toys, I think I was pretty much prepared for any sort of difficulties that might happen in life. And that is a good thing about it.
Yet, I was a very happy child.
