Did you ever watch The Secret? It was all about the law of attraction and the law of abundance. The Law of Abundance states that there is enough money, food, opportunity, love, etc. for all of us. I know this is already starting to sound all woo-woo, but don’t run away just yet. I’m really not going to go down the woo-woo path any farther. I just wanted you to keep that in mind as I progress down my thought process.

Today’s writing challenge from the WordPress.com Bloganuary prompt is to discuss my favorite toy from childhood. See? We’re already beyond the woo-woo stuff. Anyway, when I got the prompt, my mind went blank.

• My favorite toy?
• Did I even have toys?
• I couldn’t think of anything for several hours.

I eventually called my older sister to see if she remembered what I might have played with. We discussed it for a while, and we came to the same conclusion. I had a few toys as a kid, but not many, and most of the ones I had, I hated. So let’s dive in.

The one toy we both remember is Jacks. I recall sitting on the floor of our hallway, playing jacks by myself for hours on end.

I also remember having an Easy Bake Oven that I really loved, but I don’t think we ever bought any more packs of ingredients beyond what it originally came with, so after creating those first batches of cookies (or whatever I made), I never used it again.

I’ll tell you about the toys I hated now. My mom, of course, bought dolls. Lots of dolls. Even the expensive Barbie dolls. I hated dolls. I didn’t understand the point of a doll. They didn’t DO anything. I went so far as to quietly and secretly give away the big Barbie doll set that I got for Christmas, on Christmas day. The dolls and accessories weren’t even a day old before they were gone. Hey, I was making some kids really happy, right? I got in a wee bit of trouble for that.

So what did I do with all my free time if I wasn’t playing with toys? I read. I read a lot. I read everything I could get my hands on. I read the Encyclopedia Brittanica at the age of 3. I read thousands of books. I read labels on products. If a word existed anywhere, I read it. I even devoured books that I didn’t enjoy if there wasn’t something better to read.

So let’s get back to abundance. I suppose I had an abundance of reading material, but toys were in very short supply. Today’s kids have so many toys that they play with once and discard for the next one in line. I’m not saying anything negative about that. I suppose I could say the same for my books. I’d read one and move on to the next. I didn’t spend time re-reading any of them unless I had no choice.

But the process of trying to remember what toys I had really hit me pretty hard. I really didn’t have toys. I’m sure there must have been one or two that I just don’t remember, but overall, I went through most of my childhood without toys. It’s hard to imagine that happening to kids these days.

I’m not making any judgments either. Was I better off? I don’t know. Would I have had more mental stimulation if I’d had more toys to interact with? Maybe. Or maybe I had to stimulate my mind without any help. It’s hard to say.

I turned out okay, obviously, despite my lack of toy abundance. Millions of kids today turn out okay with an over-abundance of toys. So abundance is probably not really a factor. Or at least, maybe an abundance of any one specific thing isn’t a factor.

I certainly had some abundance in my life. I had an abundance of love from my parents and family. I had an abundance of reading material. I guess I even had an abundance of dolls until I gave them away. Maybe we work with what we have. Maybe we can find success by rolling with those things we have in our lives, without worrying about the things we don’t have.

Ok, that’s getting a little woo-woo, so I’ll put the brakes on now.

So my favorite toy as a child was a set of Jacks. My favorite thing to do was read. Luckily, there’s a never-ending abundance of materials to read. So woo-woo for that.

This post is part of the WordPress Bloganuary Challenge for 2022, where everyone participating is provided a writing prompt each day. Today’s prompt was to write about my favorite childhood toy.