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My recent post about missing the magic of cuddlies has gotten me thinking more about the subject...
One of my mother's anxiety triggers was clutter (I am glad she is no longer alive to see the way I live, now), and so she would regularly encourage me to get rid of toys I had outgrown. But it was always something we did together: going through my toys one by one, and deciding which I wanted to keep, and which I was ready to get rid of. And if they were cuddly animals or dolls, or books, we would donate them to someplace with younger kids, so they could continue to be loved.
For this reason, I no longer have many of the cuddlies, bears, and other stuffed animals I matured with... But neither do I feel that they are things I have lost, or were "taken away from me." A few of the cuddlies I loved forever, and those, I've kept (My Hedgehog, for one). ...But I think one reason why they no longer comfort me as they used to is that, now, they remind me of everything I've lost, so the comfort they provide is cancelled out by the sadness they trigger.
And now, onto the geek question:
My parents let me keep my pacifier, without drama, until I was four years old, until one night, going into a friends' house for dinner, I forgot about it, and left it in the back seat of the car.
When we got back to the car, I couldn't find it anywhere, and was very upset,* so the next day, my mother handed me a small novelty toy, telling me it's a "Grown-Up Pacifier," and I was a big girl, now, and so this will be more fun for me. And she was right (description follows):
It was a small, white plastic square, about 4" on a side, and about 1/4" thick. on the front, it had a clear, circular window, about 3 1/2" in diameter. On the inside, it had a thin layer/s of some sort of oil, of different colors and viscosities (I figure that's what it was) that was heat and pressure sensitive. So, when you rubbed your fingers over the back of the square, you could make different designs and patterns appear in the window on the front.
It really was a neat stress/boredom toy; I had it for years, and even the grown-ups would occassionally ask for a turn playing with it. Only problem is, I never knew the real name for it, except "Grown-up Pacifier". But putting that into a Google search only gave me two kinds of links:
So does anyone know what the real name for this thing was, and if it's still being made (the original was from 1968 -- the era of the lava lamp. I can see how this might have been a close cousin)?
*(thinking back on it now, one of them probably slipped out to the car and got rid of it while I was distracted, probably reasoning that since I'd forgotten it in the first place, my emotional attachment to it was already waning, and now would be a good time to break me of the habit, before I entered Kindergarten in September)
One of my mother's anxiety triggers was clutter (I am glad she is no longer alive to see the way I live, now), and so she would regularly encourage me to get rid of toys I had outgrown. But it was always something we did together: going through my toys one by one, and deciding which I wanted to keep, and which I was ready to get rid of. And if they were cuddly animals or dolls, or books, we would donate them to someplace with younger kids, so they could continue to be loved.
For this reason, I no longer have many of the cuddlies, bears, and other stuffed animals I matured with... But neither do I feel that they are things I have lost, or were "taken away from me." A few of the cuddlies I loved forever, and those, I've kept (My Hedgehog, for one). ...But I think one reason why they no longer comfort me as they used to is that, now, they remind me of everything I've lost, so the comfort they provide is cancelled out by the sadness they trigger.
And now, onto the geek question:
My parents let me keep my pacifier, without drama, until I was four years old, until one night, going into a friends' house for dinner, I forgot about it, and left it in the back seat of the car.
When we got back to the car, I couldn't find it anywhere, and was very upset,* so the next day, my mother handed me a small novelty toy, telling me it's a "Grown-Up Pacifier," and I was a big girl, now, and so this will be more fun for me. And she was right (description follows):
It was a small, white plastic square, about 4" on a side, and about 1/4" thick. on the front, it had a clear, circular window, about 3 1/2" in diameter. On the inside, it had a thin layer/s of some sort of oil, of different colors and viscosities (I figure that's what it was) that was heat and pressure sensitive. So, when you rubbed your fingers over the back of the square, you could make different designs and patterns appear in the window on the front.
It really was a neat stress/boredom toy; I had it for years, and even the grown-ups would occassionally ask for a turn playing with it. Only problem is, I never knew the real name for it, except "Grown-up Pacifier". But putting that into a Google search only gave me two kinds of links:
- How to get your toddler to give up the pacifier
- sexual fetish sites (adding "toy" "oil" and "stress-reducer" to the boolean search did not help)
So does anyone know what the real name for this thing was, and if it's still being made (the original was from 1968 -- the era of the lava lamp. I can see how this might have been a close cousin)?
*(thinking back on it now, one of them probably slipped out to the car and got rid of it while I was distracted, probably reasoning that since I'd forgotten it in the first place, my emotional attachment to it was already waning, and now would be a good time to break me of the habit, before I entered Kindergarten in September)
