The Polly Pocket With Stickers

One of the better aspects of Older Sisterhood is getting to play with your younger sisters’ neat toys that are technically beneath your age level but are still rad, like Polly Pockets. (The other main reason that little sisters are great is the additional lobbying power they supply – while as an only child, the sugariest cereal we could convince our dear mother to feed us was Honey Nut Cheerios, once we had two more voices clamoring with us, we were finally able to wear her down enough to buy us AlphaBits. She still drew the line at Cookie Crisp, though. Maybe if we had a couple more siblings.)

Our dear sister had many Polly Pockets, some of which lit up and made noises, but this one also demonstrates our familial proclivity for putting stickers with our names on everything we own.

We don’t know why our baby sister, who grew up decidedly uninterested in marriage, chose to thus label the matrimonial Polly Pocket, but there it is.

Monetary value: $.02

Nostalgic value: To be fair, our sister still slaps stickers all over everything she owns.

Disposal status: We didn’t rescue this one from the giveaway bag in time. Oops.

The Florida Taiwan Orange

Our friend Meryl (the one with better toys than us except when it came to Popples) grew up going to Florida for spring training every March Break (we would be jealous, but sometimes we got to go too). She brought us back this eraser, a Florida orange that could just as easily be a souvenir of Taiwan, and in doing so began a tradition of the exchange of hilarious and tacky (and sometimes frightening) souvenirs. We cherished this Florida Taiwan orange, showed it to everyone we knew, eliciting great laughs. Obviously we already knew that most cheap tacky souvenirs were made in Taiwan, but how many said as much quite so blatantly? And so the Florida Taiwan orange will always have a special place in our heart.

Monetary value: Childhood laughs are priceless.

Nostalgia value: Ditto.

Disposal status: It’s still a perfectly good eraser!

The Rainbow Brite Doll

You’ll notice that Rainbow Brite is looking a little worse for wear. In our youth, there was a brief fad that involved “make-up” dolls, on whose faces make-up would magically appear with the stroke of a hot water-soaked wand or something. We never had one of these dolls, but one of our friends did, and making eyeshadow appear and disappear on a plastic doll’s face is endlessly entertaining when one is eight years old. Rainbow Brite is not one of those dolls, but we thought she should be, and we scoured her face with a hot washcloth at every opportunity, which accomplished little except to make her eyebrows and star-shaped birthmark fade.

Hey look, we have her little Sprite buddy too. We were at least smart enough not to try and soak him with water.

Monetary value: At least we didn’t scribble all over her face with markers, like some cousins we know.

Nostalgic value: Maybe Rainbow Brite is partly why we’ve always envied red hair?

Disposal status: Garbage, unfortunately. “Here, kid, have a strongly used doll from the ’80s who doesn’t even have a magic make-up face.”

The Pathfinder Sash

Another relic from our wholesome Canadian girlhood, our completed Pathfinder sash. Pathfinders is the older, nerdier, bossier version of Brownies and Girl Guides (of which we were neither). Our participation in Pathfinders was entirely accidental, as we have never been much of what one might call a “joiner.” But we were somehow cajoled into to accompanying our mother when she dropped our sisters off for their first Brownie/Girl Guide meeting, which also happened to be the first Pathfinder meeting. Upon meeting the Pathfinder leader (very cheerful, welcoming, and pregnant) and discovering that there were only three other girls in the group who seemed nice and approachably dorky, we were more amenable to the idea of becoming a Pathfinder, especially after learning that winter camping would be done in a lodge, not in tents, and that our main responsibility on such a trip would be to teach 7-year-olds a silly dance. (The Bunny Hop. You haven’t lived until you’ve Bunny Hopped with a Brownie troupe.)

In retrospect, we realize this was probably our dear mother’s crafty plan all along, but we don’t really mind since we mainly have fond memories of our time in Pathfinder’s, and being a Pathfinder helped knock off a whole bunch of requisite community service hours for our high school (teaching Brownies to Bunny Hop counted). We also became quite adept at selling Girl Guide cookies with minimal effort: We would simply intercept a teacher on his way to a staff meeting with a box of cookies, and the next day we’d have filled our quota by noon.

We dimly recall a bizarre weekend spent at a trade show for hunters or something where our ill-attended booth was right across from a dog obstacle course. So we mainly sat around looking dorky in our uniforms, eating cookies, and watching dogs run in circles every 45 minutes. And a camping trip where our minds were blown when we baked a cake in a solar oven. Though our completed sash indicates that we must have done something to get all those badges, we can’t actually remember what any of those things were, aside from Bunny Hopping with Brownies. Still, we suppose Pathfinders was alright. It kept us out of trouble, anyway. (Not that we got into trouble, at the age of 13 we mostly just locked ourself in our room to listen to Broadway musical soundtracks, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Monetary value: Someone who wants to go as a Pathfinder for Halloween could pay us $5 and have an extremely authentic costume. Anyone?

Nostalgic value: Great. We miss Claire, Emily, and Jasmine, and if we could remember your last names, we would try to track you down on Facebook. As it is, we will just think fondly of our evenings at the CNIB and our afternoons at Belmont House.

Disposal status: Folded up and kept for posterity, you know, to prove that we completed that Citizenship badge, or whatever – we don’t actually remember what the badges were for, only that they were hard to sew on.

The Inexplicable Window

A classic example of our childhood penchant for whimsy and also for just being a plain old weirdo. Originally, this meticulously made little window frame framed a pencil-crayon sketch of a peaceful meadow under a rainbow (our 11-year-old self’s idea of paradise, apparently). Due perhaps to early exposure to The Wizard of Oz, as a child we cherished a particular post-modern mash-up fantasy about getting “over the rainbow”, a place where, we were sure, all the fictional characters we adored (a motley crew that included Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Betty Boop, all the Muppets and, for some reason, Foghorn Leghorn) frolicked together, though likely in different neighbourhoods laid out not dissimilarly to a theme park (an early map we drew of “over the rainbow” – unfortunately not to be found in the basement – betrays the unconscious influence Disney World must have had on our young spatial imagination).

At the age of 11 we were still, evidently, entertaining such notions, and, more alarmingly, engaging in the sort of magical thinking whereby a leftover wall of a dollhouse can be transformed into a portal to a social club made up of some of the most disturbing animated characters of the 20th century. And so, with paint left over from our recent bedroom makeover (we still like that sunny yellow) and gingham left over from our recent Dorothy Halloween costume (obviously), we created this weird little window that stayed on our wall until we moved into our first grown-up apartment many years later. Although do be reassured that our childish hallucinations never got quite so bad that we never actually found ourselves shrinking and climbing through the little window. Small blessings.

Monetary value: Priceless, sort of.

Nostalgic value: We still can’t believe we confessed all that goofy over the rainbow nonsense. Sheesh.

Disposal status: Garbage, reluctantly.

The Definition Game

As far as we can remember, we have never actually played this game, despite its well-used appearance. If you are Canadian and of a certain age, you now have the Austin Powers theme song stuck in your head which, long before it was the Austin Powers theme was the Definition theme (and before that it was Quincy Jones’ Soul Bossa Nova). Definition was, if you’ll pardon the pun, the defining game show of Canada in the 1970s and 1980s (although we always preferred Classic Concentration with a pre-Jeopardy Alex Trebek).

One of our small claims to fame is that our dear mother once appeared on Definition, and won a sewing machine, and this neat little tv that lived in our kitchen for two and a half decades before it finally died and was tossed out. (She was also on Split Second and Jackpot and it was to her great consternation that Just Like Mom went off the air before she could take us on it. By the way, Canadians remember Just Like Mom with fondness that turns to disgust upon rewatching – Americans are just baffled at why a nation would let such a horrifyingly creepy man so near to their children.)

However, we were almost able to achieve the mother-daughter game show dream team in the early 1990s when our mother got wind of a game show pilot being shot somewhere nearby (Bolton, or Hamilton, or some place like that). And so in the wee hours of a Saturday morning in 1993, we dragged ourselves out of bed and drove at least an hour to a dingy-looking tv studio where the craft table consisted only of a couple of boxes of donuts. That is all we remember of that day, aside from one truly mortifying moment when, in the midst of filming the game show, we mistook the kid from Seaquest for the kid from Free Willy and were forced to repeat our wrong answer to the stupidest question ever due to technical difficulties. Fortunately, the show (“Picture That” or somesuch) never made it to air, and the airwaves were spared the sight of this dorky 12-year-old mis-identifying Tiger Beat pin-ups.

Monetary value: People seem to love retro board games. We could probably score at least $7 for this thing.

Nostalgic value: We also love retro board games.

Disposal status: Keeping for hilarity and an excuse to trot out inane anecdotes about our family’s penchant for game shows.

The Shellacked Shoebox

Time was, we were really into shellac. Or Podgy, or Podge-It, or whatever you want to call it. We were also into the New Yorker. The natural collusion of these two passions was a lot of time spent making collages. There were collages in our notebooks for art class, collages all over most of our binders, and this collage-covered box that was filled with what we thought of as the magic of Broadway (really, just old Playbills and a few pieces of shiny confetti that fell on us during one of the many performances of Chicago we attended). We were convinced that this sort of intense perusal of what we supposed was the most sophisticated magazine in the entire history of the universe would somehow bring us psychically closer to the city we constantly obsessed about.

In retrospect, there were probably worse ways we could have been channeling our obsessive energy, and we got a kick out of seeing some of those old Playbills (we were a spoiled young lady who was taken to New York City quite a lot and watched quite a lot of Broadway shows – we’ve even got the Playbill from the underrated Titanic musical in there, and the one from the revival of Into the Woods.

Monetary value: The Playbills are all in pretty pristine condition…

Nostalgic value: High. We were a big nerd, but didn’t have the worst taste ever.

Disposal status: Keeping until our heart hardens further.

The first (and only) crossstitch project

We were a typically crafty and creative type of child, and we also occasionally had whimsical ideas about old-timey-seeming things like embroidery. We weren’t talented enough to tackle actual embroidery, but simple counted cross-stitch was right up our alley for about two weeks, or however long it took us to finish this little project. Of course our favourite part of this little exercise was the embroidery floss, those shiny skeins that still send shivers of delight up our spine. Of course, after our brief foray into counted cross-stitch we realized it was pretty boring, akin to a colouring book made of sewing. But our love of embroidery floss lingered on – we made worry dolls of all likenesses and, of course, countless friendship bracelets.

Monetary value: Ha!

Nostalgic value: We’d rather have found the friendship bracelets, frankly.

Disposal status: Tossed.

The Avonlea Album

A relic of our Very Canadian Girlhood, we procured this book when our dear mother took us to a Road to Avonlea open house type of event – a lengthy drive to an airport hangar of a television studio where we toured the show’s sets and got autographs from famous people like Mag Ruffman (aka our very favourite character Aunt Olivia), who thanked us for being “good liner-uppers.” We were young, but not too young to recognize a weird backhanded compliment like that, and we’re afraid our love of Road to Avonlea fell off significantly after that event. It was like sitting too close at the ballet. All those people in their beautiful period outfits with puffed sleeves were really just local working actors grateful to have a regular gig and annoyed at having to spend their entire Saturday smiling at starry-eyed nine-year-olds.

For those of you who did not have as idyllic a Canadian girlhood as we, Road to Avonlea was must-see tv on Sunday nights in the late 80s and early 90s, a sort of spin-off of Anne of Green Gables based (very) loosely on another L. M. Montgomery book called The Story Girl. It was clean and earnest and Canadian and sweet and funny and we were faithful, obsessive even, viewers. We even owned a novelization of one of the episodes which has long since been thrown out because as it turns out novelizations are a horrifying scourge on culture and literacy, but still, we tried.

Monetary value: Oh gosh. We don’t want to discount the value of Mag Ruffman’s autograph and semi-mean joke, but really? $10?

Nostalgic value: The show itself will always have a very special place in our heart, and we’ve even been known to watch an old syndicated episode if it happens to be on when we’re procrastinating, but this book does nothing so much as remind us of that weird day when we peeked behind the scenes and the magic crumbled.

Disposal status: Giveaway. Sorry, Mag Ruffman. We still think you’re really cool. (Even cooler now that you’re all about teaching women to use power tools!) But the “liner-upper” comment still rankles. We know, we’re oversensitive.

The Popple

After Curious George, the most beloved stuffed animal in our collection was Puffball the Popple (yes, that’s her real name, just check Wikipedia). Puffball holds the distinction of being the first toy we purchased with our own money (the fact that said money was a birthday gift from our grandparents is immaterial). We were five. Our father wanted us to put our hard-won $20 in the bank (let us remind you that we were five), and we can still remember his vaguely disapproving and disappointed sigh when we insisted that we wanted to spend this money on a Popple. Still, we never regretted our decision.

Puffball’s fur is somewhat matted from several runs through the washing machine (proof of how well-loved she was). I certainly had at least as much fun with her as these creepy children in the commercial:

We also greatly preferred our Popple to those of any of our friends, even Meryl (who usually had more covetable toys than us) only had a mini-Popple which, while cute, was difficult to “pop” (if that makes any sense) – after all, part of the fun of Popple was tucking them into a ball and throwing them around the bedroom. However, another part of the fun of Popples was definitely NOT watching the terrible tv series:

Monetary value: A Popple who’s been through the wash a few times? Not exactly mint-in-the-box, is it?

Nostalgia value: Huge. We bought it with our own money that our grandparents gave us!

Disposal status: Keeper. I know, I know.