Toys

When I say toys I’m talking about childhood toys.  If your mind immediately went to sex toys you are a bad person and should be ashamed of yourself.

Anyway, I’m talking about the toys of my childhood- the ones that I cannot bear to throw away because I get a distinct little stomachy squeezy feeling whenever I think about them.  In fact, I find it baffling that people could ever get rid of old toys; you see all the time on books and on TV that children, once they reach a certain age, feel that their toys are uncool and either throw them away or give them away.  I suppose giving them away is rather benevolent so I can't really fault it, but I cannot understand what goes through someone’s mind when they distance themselves from such a distinct part of their childhood.  To me, it is akin to giving away part of your soul.

I am probably one of the least spiritual/religious and most logical, reasonable people you will ever meet.  The furthest I would ever go would be to say that humans may one day in the distant future develop telekinetic powers, (at least I hope they will!) but I’ll talk about that some other time.  The one part of me that is completely illogical and irrational is apparent when I am around soft toys.

You see, I know that objects cannot have consciousness.  I KNOW that, but I also know with sheer certainty that my soft toys have developed consciousness because of the love that I have given them.  With every game that I played with them, with every characteristic I have decided that they possessed, they have become more and more alive.  They may just be lumps of stuffing and material to everyone else, but to me, they are my best friends.  They’ve certainly been closer to me than most humans have.  If I ever lost Duck, for example, (Duck is a duck that I got for my first birthday) I would be so crestfallen that I don’t know what I’d do with myself.  I love Duck more than almost everyone in the world, but I’m so scared about damaging her (she is very old now) that I avoid cuddling and touching her excessively, instead just talking to her and letting her watch over me.  This is a little sad because toys are meant to be cuddled.

Toys can also be really, REALLY scary because of this power they are able to build up inside them from people’s love.  The other day Foofy and I went to Le musée de la poupée (Doll Museum) in Paris, and it was utterly macabre.  Here is a selection of my favourite/ones that almost caused me to soil myself.

 

Evil:

 

 

This one is definitely going to consume me entirely starting with my eyes:

 

 

No! I don’t want to play!!!!!

 

 

It’s coming.  IT’S COMING FOR ME:

 

 

I DON’T WANT TO LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE THIS IS OKAY:

 

 

I joke about these monstrosities, but in reality they make me very sad.  You see, I like to see toys that have obviously been loved and cared for in their lives.  When I go to a friend’s family home and see that they have a bear with bald patches or something I always pick it up and give it a kiss because I want to be a part of how much love has been infused into it.  The thing about these dolls is, apart from being dolls (I only ever played with soft toy animals- apart from Barbies I never liked dolls), anyone who has ever truly loved or doted on these creatures is now long dead, and, thus, they are dead in a sense too.  When a toy stops being cared for, it dies. (According to my ‘religion’ at least.)  These dolls still have life in them because they gain a minute amount of life energy by so many people simply looking at them, but not enough to make them truly alive.  The reason these dolls are creepy is because around them is an aura of death and loneliness caused by years, sometimes centuries of them being behind a glass case having people stare at them, but nobody actually loving them.  Their souls, unlike that of Duck and my other friends, exist, trapped in their bodies, wistfully hoping that someone will come along and care for them as much as their first owner did 150 years ago, but as time has gone by, they are gradually giving up hope.

 

I don’t want that to ever happen to my friends, but it makes me sad to think that it might one day.