The Button Bar (or one of many)

 

Did everyone have a button bar? Or is this just something our dear mother made up to use up scraps of fabric and also all the ridiculous scads of buttons that we accumulated throughout our childhood? This is just one of several such button bars, which decorated our bedroom throughout our childhood. We loved buttons, and they did seem to find us, and as we recall, they were rarely actively sought out or purchased, they just seemed to happen. (This is still the case with buttons in our life, except for one brief button-making phase that we went through, but that’s done now.)

Displayed above, as you can see, are a button from Sick Kids Hospital from the glamourous time we attended the taping of the telethon. Also, an Owl magazine button, probably obtained from the Word on the Street book festival lo these many years ago. And there’s a button celebrating CHCH channel 11, and we have no idea what that one is about. As you can see, we weren’t picky about our buttons – any and all buttons were welcome on our button bar. We’re pickier now, and buttons are displayed on the bulletin board above our desk instead of on random scraps of fabric. Maturity!

Monetary value: Ooh, a CHCH button! $o.oo

Nostalgic value: Meh. We do wish we could remember more about that Sick Kids telethon taping, though, because we’re pretty sure we had the best time there.

Disposal status: Trash.

 

 

The Barbie and the Rockers Stickerbook

As you may have gleaned by this point in the tour, we come from a family of three girls. Our dear mother also comes from a family of three girls, and her oldest sister also had three girls, the youngest of whom, my cousin Heather, was exactly ten years old on the day that we were born. This legitimately still totally wicked sticker/colouring book (are they still making these things, with the press-out stickers that always rip and the crappy glue that probably gave us all cancer? We don’t have children, and despite the occasional foray into particularly excellent toy stores, we don’t really follow that sort of thing anymore) was a gift to all three sisters from Heather. You can see how highly she thought of our behaviour from the inscription inside the front cover:

We had a complex relationship with Rocker Barbie.  We wanted to like her massive head of hair, which made us feel less self-conscious about our own unruly mane (see also: Miss Yvonne), but we were put off by her excessive eye makeup and were concerned that the only option for us, with our frizzy tonsorial situation, was over-the-top drag queen type, which freaked us out considerably since we were by nature a shy, quiet, bookish type who mainly liked to wear dresses made out of sweatshirt material.

In any case, we must have quickly become frustrated with the flimsy stickers and their sickly-sweet glue, because the book has been left largely intact, a record of 1980s cartoon fashion.

Monetary value: SHARE!

Nostalgic value: Pretty solid cartoon fashions. And we still remember getting a kick out of seeing the drawn versions of outfits we had for real for Barbie.

Disposal status: We shared the joy by giving it to a friend. She’s probably recycled it by now.

The First London A-Z

Well, not the first, but certainly our first, purchased in 2004 upon arrival in London, on the first day of our first solo trip to Europe. It is well-thumbed and certainly served its intended purpose, preventing us from ever getting lost in the streets of London (an act which we are sorry to say we did not repeat in Prague, but what can you do among such windy little streets when you don’t have a Prague A-Z only a London A-Z).

This little book got us through our first exciting but difficult night overseas, difficult not because we were homesick or any of that nonsense, but because we had made a poor choice of hostel and our bunk was directly above an overly affectionate couple from New Zealand who were too cheap to splurge on a private room. So we stuffed our ears with cotton, tried to pretend we were just in a minor earthquake, and poured over our London A-Z to plot out our route for the next day.

And we learned that valuable lesson that if you are traveling with a kissing partner, it is only polite to splurge on a private room lest you ruin some sweet Canadian girl’s first night in London.

Monetary value: It’s a bit dog-eared, but the maps are still accurate. It’s worth at least a quid and a half.

Nostalgia value: Pretty huge. That was a pretty excellent trip, bunking with shameless Kiwis aside.

Disposal status: Keeper – we used it on our most recent trip to London last fall.