By Marc de Souza
Did you ever hear of anyone who had a collection of light bulbs? Well, our son had one when he was about eight-years-old. It was just one of his many bright ideas.
While other kids were collecting such childhood treasures as seashells, colourful pebbles, stamps or coins for piggy banks, our son chose a road less travelled. And, as was his way, he did not go about this hobby in a casual fashion. He even had the school janitor and church sacristan save burnt-out bulbs for him.
Even Thomas Edison would have been surprised at some of the bulbs our son found. He was choosy, and discarded all except the ones that had some distinguishing mark – shape, colour or wattage. And he could afford to be choosy because there was no competition. No other kid was fighting to put out his light!
When the enthusiasm for burnt-out bulbs began to dim, his interest shifted to space exploration. That is when he got the bright idea to build a spaceship in our garage. Since he had no money and our neighbourhood had no stockpile of rocket fuel or space capsule, he improvised. His building materials, including the all-purpose cardboard box that our refrigerator, had been shipped from Ira, a broken chair he spied in the village house plastic tubings, rolls of adding machine tape, wheels and bits of broken toys, lots of string and lots and of imagination. The finished product, over a period of time, was very real to him, although it was never really finished since he spent months and months revising and updating it. He is presently updating himself on computers and it is likely he gonna again visit NASA. His motto: There’s never a wrong time to do the right thing.
And from the way his son, barely 3 ½ years, my grandson, is going on in his la-de-da voice ‘wow! It appears he gonna, over-take us both. Mind you, this is not an old fogey moan!’
To think of it today’s parents are even busier than we were and today’s children are constantly told by TV what kind of expensive toys they absolutely have to have. But when did we start judging a gift or a toy by the price tag? Have we lost completely the joy of making do, making the most of what we have, making fun without money? What great time we and our children had at festive time!
These days the magic word “free” has been used to lure people into buying everything from cornflakes to a roomful of furniture. Once upon a time the butcher gave away free some bones for your dog when you bought meat. Today we have to settle for free ball-point pens, balloons, calendars and those little piece of paper known as “coupons” that offer you a certain percentage off for the price of one. Yet, the word “free” has not lost its allure. And in our quest to get something for nothing, we sometimes lose sight of all the somethings we have already got for nothing.
A few years ago, some wise cracker said, “He who dies with the most toys, wins”. And we began to believe that. Recently, an even wiser cracker said, “He who dies with the most toys is still dead”.
