Revisiting the toy robot that never was

I’m really hoping I get what I want this Christmas.  I usually get awesome stuff and have no complaints, but I never seem to get what I really want.  Last Christmas I scored a nice DVD player, a book or two, a few CDs, a shirt that actually fit and a lot of other cool stuff.  It was great.  But, as usual, I didn’t get what I really, really want.

A toy robot.

It wouldn’t have to be one of those ultra-advanced, super-cool “real” robots that vacuums floors and brings you martinis when you get home from work in the evening.  Just a regular toy robot that rolls along, beeps, bings, and sucks up C-cell batteries at the rate of about 30 per hour.

I’ve wanted a toy robot ever since third grade.

I didn’t get one then.  I didn’t get one when I was in 4th grade, either, or 5th, or 6th, or ever.

The problem was, my folks were broke.  Real broke.

These were the years after they laid my dad off at the furniture factory, but before he finally got up and running in the restaurant business.  These were the lean years, man.  The food stamp years.  The kind of years Dickens wrote novels about.

Times were tough, and toy robots were way down there on my parents’ “must have” list; just above genuine Royal Wentworth china but below a six-week vacation in Paris for the entire family.  In short, the toy robot was not going to happen.

At least not for me.

Still, my folks did the best they could with five kids and a non-existent budget.  On Christmas morning, instead of a battery-powered, C-cell sucking robot that beeped and binged, I got a wind-up George Jetson.  A little stamped tin toy, made in China; the sort of thing you could buy at the dime store and get change back from your dollar.

I also got some socks, underwear and even a new pair of winter boots.  Stuff higher on my parents’ “must have” list than was a toy robot.  But stuff that - to a 3rd-grader - doesn’t even count as a gift.

I was a little disappointed, and it would have been understandable had I been bummed out big time.  But I wasn’t.  I wasn’t sad, or angry, or put out, or anything like that.

I hadn’t gotten the robot, but we had a tree with homemade decorations, we had plenty of food on the table, and - not to wax too Walton’s-esque - we had each other.  All in all, I felt pretty good about Santa, the Baby Jesus, and life in general.

“Poor” doesn’t really mean a lot to a 3rd-grade kid.  At least it didn’t to me.

But when school started up again the following week I got a primer on the subject.  As instructed before the start of Christmas vacation, we students brought our favorite Christmas presents to class the first day back.  Sort of a special “show and tell” thing.

I wasn’t about to bring socks, so George Jetson rode along in my book bag that day.

When show and tell time came, all the kids ran to the cloakroom for their dolls and tanks and G.I. Joes and ... robots.  There were three of them in there.  The biggest and fanciest of the lot belonged to Chuck Scraab, a kid I both hated and feared; he and his “gang” used to beat me up on the way home from school at least three days a week.

On the days they were too busy to beat me up, they would instead follow me home making fun of my clothes, haircut, family, religion and parents’ lack of money.

And now Chuck had ... my ... robot.  It was a thing of true beauty.  At least 24-inches tall, with lasers protruding from its black metal chest and eyes that blinked on and off.  There were rocket launchers built into its shoulders.  It would turn around - by itself! - if it bumped into a wall.

It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen, before or since.  And Chuck - Chuck! - was picking it up off the cloakroom floor and carrying it into the classroom.

I could hardly breathe.

Back at our desks, we all waved our hands in the air, impatient to be called upon to display our treasures to the rest of the class.  Chuck was chosen to go third.

He switched the robot on.  It beeped.  It binged.  Lights flashed.  The rocket launchers launched their rockets.  The Second Coming could not have impressed me more.

Chuck, robot in arms, walked past my desk on his way back to his own.  “Hey Taylor,” he sneered, glancing at my little tin wind-up toy. “What’s that piece of junk?”

I quietly slipped George Jetson back into my book bag and stopped raising my hand.

The other kids were called on one by one.  They showed their dolls and tanks and G.I. Joes.  Eventually, Mrs. Carlson called on me, even though my hand wasn’t raised.

I thought about the cool toys the other kids had shown.  I thought about Chuck Scraab’s robot, and about all the ridicule sure to be heaped on me after I’d demonstrated my cheap little tin George Jetson in front of the whole class.  And for the first time, I thought about being poor.

I thought about my raggedy clothes and the look on the cashier’s face when my mother paid for our groceries with food stamps.  I thought about our family car, the rust-holes in the floorboards my dad had patched with cardboard and duct-tape.  I thought about the big, white-labeled can of Welfare peanut butter sitting at home in the kitchen cupboard.

For the first time in my life, I was ashamed of who I was, where I came from. Red-faced, I managed to squeak out, “I forgot to bring my toy, Mrs. Carlson.”

I bawled my fool head off all the way home that day.  Thankfully and for once, Scraab and his gang were nowhere to be seen and didn’t witness my humiliation.

About halfway home, I pitched George Jetson into a snow bank and kept on walking.

In bed that night, I got thinking about ol’ George, lying out there, facedown in the cold.  I thought about my dad’s tired, defeated face and his twice-weekly trips to the unemployment office; about my mom, struggling to find new ways to stretch a pound of hamburger to feed seven people; about our Christmas tree, decked out with my Aunt Madeline’s hand-me-down lights and popcorn we’d strung ourselves, and I realized ... I was still ashamed.

But I wasn’t ashamed of my family, of our poverty ... I wasn’t ashamed of where I came from.  I was ashamed of myself.

My folks had scrimped to buy me that stupid tin toy, to buy the other cheap little trinkets that had been under the tree for my brothers and sisters Christmas morning.  They were doing the best they could for the children they loved, and I, I had let a jackass like Chuck Scraab make me turn my back on that.

It took me a long time to get to sleep that night.

The next day I searched for my windup George Jetson, from one end of that snow bank to the other.  I wish I could tell you I’d found him, took him home, and that all was then right with the world.  But I didn’t find him.  I searched so long I wound up getting to school ten minutes late and earning my first-ever tardy slip.

In the years that followed, my dad opened first one restaurant, then another, then still others.  By my teen years, we were comfortable.

The presents at Christmastime were no longer cheap or embarrassing or made of tin.  They were more likely to come from a motorcycle dealership than a dime store.

But I never did get a toy robot.

And, you know, now that I think about it, to hell with the toy robot.

What I really want is a little, wind-up George Jetson.

You can e-mail Mike Taylor with your questions, comments or tin toy store Web site addresses at mtaylor@midmich.net.

Comments

[fur boots]

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