Toys in the Attic

I have fully repaid my debt to my parents for their assistance a couple of weeks ago cleaning out my Tahoe.  I made a trip back to Fairview last weekend  to help them.  The task at hand…… cleaning out the attic.  My parents have been going through a major spring cleaning at their house.  My mom even convinced my dad to clean out and organize the garage.  Ultimately, the goal is to have a giant garage sale.  With nearly 30 years’ worth of goods building up, a garage sale is a great idea. 

The attic was one of the last areas to get organized.  I am not quite sure how I got myself volunteered into this chore, but when I went up the attic stairs for the first time, I knew I was in for much more than I bargained for.  At the top of the stairs was an entire civilization of cardboard boxes with very little room to get around.  I started handing boxes down the stairs to my wife, dad, and mom.  This lasted a good five minutes before my mom and Rachel started to get preoccupied with what was in each box rather than taking the other boxes from me. 

The boxes were divided into piles of my mom’s stuff, dad’s stuff, my stuff, house stuff, and garage sale stuff.  The folks were willing to discard a lot of the old things which was good.  I know it was hard to part ways with the old orange blinds from 1983, but it was time.  Once we got all the boxes down, it was time to sort and organize.  I was tasked with going through all of my old toys and keep sakes. 

This was a lot of fun.  We went and bought several plastic containers so that once the goodies were sorted, I could store them safely and hopefully preserve their condition.  My full intention was to go through all of my stuff, organize it and then put it safely back into my parents  attic rather than having to take possession myself.  There was something that I was hoping to come across and take with me, and that was all of my old concert ticket stubs.

 To my excitement, I found them in the first box I went through.  There they were in all of their glory – the mix of all of the glorious late 80s and 90s bands that I went to see in high school.  Everyone from Poison, Metallica, Bush, No Doubt, Smashing Pumpkins, Prince, Aerosmith, and many, many others were represented.  Now the question is, “what do I do with them?” I don’t think Rachel will let me hang them on the wall in my bedroom like I used to do. 

After my victorious find, I began to go through my boxes of toys.  I was really into action figures when I was a kid and the ones that I liked were He-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Super Heroes.  I was hoping to find toys in a condition that might be worth something to collectors, but all of mine were definitely played with.  The He-Man Figures were in pretty good shape and so were the Ninja Turtles.  The transformers could probably be alright if I wanted to go through all the parts and put them back together, but the G.I. Joes were in terrible shape. 

If you remember back to when you were a kid, the G.I. Joes were put together buy a rubber band that connected their legs to their torso.  This made for a fun toy that twisted around and was great at doing battle with other toys, but 20 years later, it makes for a toy that snaps in two because the rubber band rots. 

I spent a lot of time looking through the Star Wars figures.  Aside from a little mold that has grown on the Millennium Falcon, the Star Wars collection was in good shape.  All of the action figures were safely stored in the giant C3PO and Darth Vader shaped containers and I was able to finally add the Hammerhead figure from the house.  You see, the Hammerhead figure was lost in the dirt many, many years ago and we just found him a few years ago while building in the backyard.  I really got a kick out of finding the  Rancor monster and shaking him to hear all of the stuff that was stuck inside his stomach because I had put the arms and legs of many an unlucky action figure into his mouth.  In fact, to try to replicate the scene where he was trying to eat Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi and Luke thwarted his efforts with a giant stick that held his mouth open, I used to steal branches from my mom’s decorative plant and use them to hold his mouth open. 

The toys are now all safely resting in clean, sealed plastic containers.  They definitely served their purpose and they were all very used.  I used to love to use my imagination when I was a kid and come up with different adventures for my toys.  At the end of the day, most of them ended up in the belly of a large plastic shark because what I loved to play more than anything was Jaws!