"Toys"

Hot Wheels cars were among my favorite toys when I was a kid. I spent hours at a time arranging and rearranging them, bumper to fender, according to age, color, style, what was new, what was popular, what did my best friend not have yet?, size, condition and the like. Conjuring up reasons to take out my cases and admire their contents, be it an addition to the collection or a shrewd trade with a neighborhood friend, took up a great deal of a little boy’s time and mental energy.

A couple of years later it was Star Wars. Action figures, X-wing Fighters, TIE Fighters, Landspeeders, the Dagobah System and (the coup de gras) the Millennium Falcon. Whole galaxies were created and multi-million dollar movies were remade on the cheap right there on my bedroom floor. As I grew up, Star Wars was replaced by G.I. Joe, which was replaced by a Daisy Powerline 880 and the outdoors, and so on. Not long after that, the little boy was himself replaced by a teenager and eventually a young man who no longer collected, rearranged and obsessed over toys like these.

I couldn’t tell you exactly when it was, but not too long ago I looked in the mirror and discovered that a grown man had stealthily replaced that little boy, as well as the adolescent, the teenager and the invincible young twenty-something.

Real life has replaced the fantasies. Days spent poring over work have replaced the days spent poring over toys.

Nevertheless, growing up has not kept me from lying awake in bed the night before one particular day on the calendar every year. Just as I would lie impatiently in bed, fantasizing about what awaited me under my childhood Christmas trees year after year as a boy, I now toss and turn the night before hunting season opens, dreaming of what awaits me. The way the crisp, cool wind chills my face, turns my cheeks red, chaps my lips and sends tears streaming out of the corners of my eyes as I ride through the woods underneath the pre-dawn glow of daybreak; how the woods sound so new and so foreign again, like hearing them for the first time when the wind gently nudges the trees from their slumber, and as the birds and the squirrels begin their harmonious daily concert; how I always tend to get colder thirty minutes after the sun comes up; how the soil and the grass and the honeysuckle and the pines and the greenfields fill my senses with so much fragrance that I get that sensation of being able to smell again after a head cold finally breaks. Lying awake the night before the season opens, I look forward to the camaraderie of the hunting camp; to catching up with old friends and making new ones; to standing around the gambrel laughing and listening to my buddies’ stories as the successful ones clean their harvest; to the hiss, spit, and crackle of the season’s first good fire as the familiar tufts of sweet, oaky smoke welcome me back to camp.

The Hotwheels cases have been replaced by a gun safe. The fantasy playsets have been replaced by a humble lease of timber land, complete with a river swamp and pine plantations, oak bottoms and clearcuts.

A few weeks before the season opens every year, I take out my toys and arrange them on the floor, inspecting them, cleaning them, remembering fondly the last time I played with them. Just like when I was a kid.

The CFO begrudgingly acknowledges the approach of another season when she finds me sitting cross-legged on the floor of our guest room surrounded by insulated boots, snake boots, duck boots, rubber boots, sock liners, grunt calls, doe bleats, flashlights, wool gloves, coveralls, blind bags, insect repellent, camo hats, orange hats, wool caps, face covers, wool socks, maps, seat cushions, backpacks, bone saws, long-johns, knives, insulated gloves, jackets, coats, rainsuits, binoculars, rattling bag, cloth gloves, tick spray, bug spray, scent suppressant.

No wonder she stares blankly back at me when I inevitably say, “you know what I really need . . .”

In some ways, there is no comparison between the man I have become and the little boy I used to be. In many others, we are still one and the same. I still pretend. I still dream. And I still play with toys.



(c) Roger Guilian 2009

"The Best $3.49 I Ever Spent"

When my son was two, I got him a children’s rod-and-reel combo emblazoned with characters from one of his favorite animated movies. It came equipped with a push-button baitcasting reel and a goofy rubber fish tied to the end of the line, intended to aid his learning to cast without impaling himself and those standing behind him. The hard rubber lure, a caricature of a clown fish, was the manufacturer’s indication to fathers everywhere who might purchase the fishing pole that the angling wouldn’t be all that serious just yet.

Firmly convinced that my son was well advanced of other kids who may be perfectly content slinging around and retrieving a rubber clown fish, I removed it and replaced it with a shiny minnow lure from which I’d detached the hooks. If my son was going to fire blanks unwittingly, they could at least look like the real thing.

Not long after he got that cartoonish fishing pole, the reel broke. The rig became little more than something for him to carry when he accompanied me fishing, excursions that usually didn’t last very long. The only entertainment my son got out of that silly little fishing pole was when he tomahawked it and slapped the surface of the water with the lure. I didn’t catch a whole lot of fish any time that pole was around.

About a year later, I decided my son really needed to know how to cast a line, so I upgraded and got him a basic graphite rod with a Zebco baitcaster. Turns out, I’d overestimated his readiness and bought him too much fishing pole. Despite numerous lessons in the front yard, he never got the hang of casting that thing.

Like a father is wont to do, I acquired an irrational fear that my son would never gain an appreciation for fishing, and instead would wind up joining an interpretive dance troupe in San Francisco. With each warm day that passed when I knew we should have our lines in the water but didn’t, I felt more and more like I was failing him as a father.

Not that I’m a big fisher; I’m not. In fact, I don’t have a whole lot to offer him by way of angling expertise. But, darn it, a boy should know how to bait a hook and cast a line and I felt like it was my duty as his dad to teach him.

Last Christmas I tried again. I downsized somewhat from rig number two, and got him a Shakespeare Ugli-Stik Kids’ fishing pole with a little Zebco 10-20 push-button reel with twelve pound test line. I tied a red bow around it and hid it behind the Christmas tree. When I brought it out and gave it to my son, he was satisfyingly appreciative, but seemed sort of, well, like a kid who didn’t know how to cast a line who’d just been given another fishing pole. I vowed to make it stick this time.

Every so often, the boy and I would practice his casting. He had the devil’s time getting down the timing on releasing the push-button at first, but eventually got the hang of it, and showed a renewed interest in fishing. We were ready to fish for real.

After turkey season, we fished at least one day most weekends off a dock that juts out into the shallow waters of Wolf Bay’s southern shore. The boy had become adroit at casting his D.O.A. lure into the Bay, but had yet to catch a fish. Finally one day, he got frustrated and gruffed, “Daddy, we’re NEVER gonna catch a fish!”

The heck you say.

The next morning, we drove to a tackle shop and bought a dozen live shrimp. After we returned, I rigged up his line, hooked on one of the shrimp, and watched him cast it farther than he ever had, thanks to the split-shot weights I’d added to the line. Moments later he retrieved an empty hook. “Daddy! They stole my shrimp!” A couple shrimp later and success was his; he and his little rod hauled in a small catfish.

You’d have thought Captain Ahab finally landed Moby Dick! We spent the next few hours going through our shrimp. By the time we ran out, the boy had caught a couple more catfish, a pinfish, a ground mullet, two croakers and a stingray.

My son’s excitement and fascination with fishing were supercharged that day. Now he thinks and talks of little else. You can’t get a whole lot for three-and-a-half bucks these days. A gallon of gas; a kids’ meal at a fast-food restaurant; a small water at the movie theatre. But those live shrimp were the best $3.49 I ever spent, and I cannot imagine a better return on my meager investment than the smile on his face, and his sense of accomplishment at hauling in his catch.



(c) Roger Guilian 2009