Toys R Us

Nothing in a child’s life compares with the adrenaline rush of stepping into a toy store.  The news that Toys R Us is going out of business drove me into a fit of nostalgia so strong I thought I would descend into melancholy.  So many memories emerged from deep inside, they flashed by so fast I had to stop and hit rewind a few times.  Once second I encountered a memory from my distant childhood, the next a memory from my daughter’s childhood, and then my granddaughter’s first time in a toy store.

I have a memory of a small redheaded boy in a shopping cart throwing a temper tantrum that only a redhead could throw, over a toy that is lost to time.  I remember being with my great-grandmother and mother as we shopped in Wolf and Dessauer in Fort Wayne.  I do not remember the particulars of why I threw the tantrum and the memory is strange in that it is from the viewpoint of someone looking at me, almost as if someone else’s memory has been transplanted in my brain.  I suppose the memory took on a life of its own, trapped deep inside my brain with nothing to do but imagine.  

When we lived in Florida my daughter was born and it wasn’t toys that sent me to Toys R Us, but something more practical—diapers for my baby.  I would make a weekly trip to the store and immediately head to the back to where the diapers resided.  As time went by the diapers increased is size in proportion to my daughter.  At first, as I would head down the aisle to the diapers I would look at the toys and imagine my daughter playing with them someday.  Later as she got older, I would stop and purchase a doll or something educational and bring it home with the diapers—fathers love to spoil their daughters.

Recently I took my granddaughter to Toys R Us for the first time.  I smiled and relished in her delight as she scampered about from toy to toy, from aisle to aisle, overwhelmed with indecision.  Fifty-five some years after a little redheaded boy threw a fit in Wolf and Dessauer, his redheaded granddaughter had the opposite reaction.  I helped her make a decision and we happily left the store.   The loss of Toys R US will be to me as calamitous as the loss of Wolf and Dessauer.  As we bid adieu to Toy R Us let me say one thing.  Thank You!