The Toys That Shape Us

Thoughts on the connection of play and work

I was walking around the local Tractor Supply Company store and walked down the toy aisle. I’ve always loved toys, and have actually thought that in my old age I would enjoy having a toy store; or at least working in one.

I smiled as I remembered my own childhood, playing with Tonka dump trucks and coveting toy cranes and loaders. Toys in the 60s and 70s were sturdy affairs that could be played with, ridden, abandoned and passed on to other generations. (Those trucks could also be destroyed by more ‘enthusiastic’ kids who obtained fireworks or gasoline in a less monitored and restricted generation.)

But looking at the toys at Tractor Supply reminded me that kids come from many perspectives and backgrounds and that our toys can influence our passions and future careers.

Take a look at the trucks, tractors, pallets and toy farm animals above and below. Some children from rural communities (or even from urban areas) are influenced by play with those beautiful pieces of metal and plastic. And aren’t we glad that this happens?

For decades our society has pressed the unfortunate idea that the only proper path for children was college, and that the best possible jobs involved desks and computers (apart from professional sports and entertainment, and now of course work as social media influencers).

But if there weren’t people raising grain, vegetables and livestock, if there weren’t men and women transporting those products by truck, rail, ship or airplane, we’d not only lack food. We wouldn’t have roads, homes, electricity, desks or computers. Happily for the advancement of civilization, I suspect that toys reinforce no small number of kids in their career choices.

Clearly we believe this, if only based on the fact that so many people try so desperately hard to make toys gender neutral for fear that girls or boys will be improperly influenced by their exposure to dolls vs trains, or whatever you like.

Of course, it isn’t only heavy equipment or farm implements. When I was a kid I loved nothing better than spending time looking at toy guns. (I know, scandalous!)

A toy Kentucky Rifle or pistol, a toy bolt-action rifle reminscent of an US Army Enfield (with real fake bullet in the chamber!) and I was set for endless imaginary play and combat reenactments. A cap gun that actually worked? And a friend who had one as well? Shootout on Grapevine Road, with genuine sparks and smoke from beneath the hammer!

I never became a combat soldier or law-enforcment officer. However, those toys stoked a lifelong love of history and fueled my imagination, social interactions and physical activity in ways that no amount of Call of Duty on XBox could ever have accomplished. (I’m not trying to hate on Call of Duty. Great game. But outside with a toy rifle was better in my book.)

Furthermore, I have owned firearms for my entire adult life and have never once shot at a human being nor felt the need to do so. Likewise, I don’t know of any of my childhood, toy-gun-toating peers who did either.

Nevertheless, I am confident that many women and men who devote their lives (or have given their lives) in military or law-enforcement roles were people who, like me, were drawn to toy guns. Those toys played a part in shaping them.

What toy shaped me? I suspect that books, and the worlds therein, were what formed me in at least as powerful a way as toys. The power of story, the endless delight of words and language, the music of poetry all made me who I am. But toys were part of the journey.

For better or worse I still have a lot of toys from my childhood. And not long ago I ran across this little beauty in a box of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars.

For those of you who are older, this is what ambulances looked like ‘back in the day.’ Before they were rolling intensive care units. They often began their lives as hearses, or converted hearses. (A clever dual use and make no mistake. ‘Bob, this one’s dead. Can you take him on to the funeral home?’)

The stretcher was, obviously, loaded into the back, and often by people with virtually no knowledge of, nor skill in, medical care whatsoever. I remember having one toy ambulance that had a little pale, plastic patient lying on a pale, plastic gurney in the back. I would look through the wee window and wonder about him, lying there in a perpetual state of injury or illness, wondering down the decades when the driver would come back and finally take them to the hospital.

I don’t know if this made me want to be a physician. Probably, it played a part. I always felt a deep concern for my toys and for the toy people within them and around them. (I could never destroy toy soldiers, for they I felt that they deserved my care and concern.)

Like so many things in our lives, the influences, confluences, tendencies, gifts and times of dumb luck or divine providence all swirl about and we land where we land.

I know that later, once I had passed childhood, I had pictures of medical helicopters in my college room, meant to inspire me to move forward in my studies, in hopes of working on one. Indeed I did up spending time during my residency flying on those great inventions, those life-saving, whirling dervishes that defy gravity to defy death. The image, analagous to a toy, had its effect.

All I know is that from here, in my 59th year, I can say that play was at least as critical to my life as education.

We need to recognize that because there are all kinds of people, doing all kinds of important jobs in this world, we should continue to encourate all kinds of toys and all kinds of play.

Because I sure hope that among all the fascinating jobs in the world, children will still want to grow up into farmers, manufacturers, builders, producers of energy, electricians, plumbers, soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and all the rest. As well as mothers and fathers.

Next time you’re in a toy store, keep that in mind.

Edwin