Of birthdays and such

Today's toys are very different from what they once were

JANUARY is a busy month for me, as far as birthdays are concerned. Both my daughters were born in this month, with their birthdays just five days apart.
 We try to celebrate their birthdays, at the very least with a simple dinner at a place of their choice. And then there are the presents of course.
 It was different when I was small as I was never really bothered about my birthday. Most of the time I forgot, save for a few occassions that I was reminded of it.
 But I remember I got a toy from a sister once, when I was about eight. It was a battery-operated capsule of the Apollo spacecraft, a popular toy a time when America was in the final stages of putting man on the moon. I had wanted the toy so much after seeing it in a toyshop right at the far corner of the Port Dickson town.

 I got it and spent many hours playing with the made-in-China toy. The capsule will move, with multi-coloured lights and all, and at intervals a small door would open and an astronaut would pop out, as if to take pictures of space. American astronauts Neil Amstrong and Edwin Aldrin landed on the moon in July that year.
 As even batteries were a luxury item then, I sometimes just pushed the thing around without actually switching the power on to conserve energy. The toy capsule cost a mere RM8.
 When I moved to the kampung, toys were furthest from my mind. Bahau was still a one-street town at the time. It was difficult to find a shop that sells butter, let alone toys.
 And so I had to either make my own toys or just make do with playing hide-and-seek with my younger sister, Roziah.
 My late father planted corn on a large portion of the land where we stayed and my sister and I had a lot of fun playing in the corn field. When it was my turn to hide, she usually had to spend a considerable amount of time seeking since it was so easy to hide in the field.
 Other times we'd play shopkeeper. I'd be the shopkeeper and she'd be my customer and when we're sick of playing our respective roles, we'd switch. We'd pluck whatever leaves we could and those would be 'vegetables' sold at our make-believe shop.
 Kuala Lumpur was like another country at the time. I remember feeling overwhelmed when I first set my sights on the Federal Highway, when my elder sister took me over to her place during one school term break.
 I had never seen so many cars before and it was also the first time I saw a dual-carriageway road. The blue Sri Jaya buses were a lot cleaner than the rickety and unreliable machines passing through my kampung, I thought.
 I was mesmerised when I first saw the water fountain at Jalan Loke Yew, at the entrance to the Merdeka Stadium. I thought they must simply be wasting plenty of water. Little did I know that the water was pumped from the pool as the fountain and falls back into the same pool.
 I hate the Federal Highway now by the way, as its always choked with vehicles. I'd try to avoid travelling on that stretch of road as much as I can.
 In my kampung, I spent a lot of time setting traps for birds. There was a bird the locals called 'wak-wak' which was a favourite. The bird, resembling chickens, spends a lot of time on the ground and only flies when it is threatened.
 Its not that difficult to catch. I'd use the ordinary rat trap and tie a live dragonfly as bait. The bird has a sweet taste and I dare say that it tasted better than chicken. Its listed under the 'protected species' list by the way. But I was just an 11-year old kid then and those list meant nothing to me.
 Today's kids are different though, although I guess its just part and parcel of development. I don't see children playing outside as much as I did anymore, except those who play sports like football and such.
 My two daughters were of no exception, so much so that if I were to take out all the Barbie Dolls and Polly Pocket toys now kept in the third-floor storeroom at home, I'd probably be able to build a maniature township with them.


ENDS