Kids These Days...

People tell me I have a hell of a good creativity. Actually I have this huge problem. You know how they say that people are either left brained or right brained? I firmly believe I am middle brained. I am in a constant state of conflict. My job demands logic, and a lot of it. To escape from this pseudo permanent logical state of mind, I escape to illogical creativity. Since I was young, this has been an issue. At the risk of sounding a tad fruity, I enjoy creating worlds, characters etc in my mind.

 

Well its all true, and I have my parents to thank for that. My parents were probably the cheapest parents around. I mean, the only thing they had an abundance of was affection, which by the way is highly overrated. I've had people come up to me and say oh your parents love you so much bla bla. I had a few teddy bears and hand me down Barbies from my sister. Other than that I had next to nil. I had to work my ass off for stuff other children just got automatically. Hey boy, you wanna bike, get me 7As in your UPSR…. But I only got 4 subjects. I don't care…make an A. Heh, so much for Christian parenting. That dumb kid with binocular spectacles down the road only had to get no 37 class position out of 39 to get a motorized bicycle. I had to be in the top 3. When I finally got my bike, my dad bought me a bike about twenty sizes too big so my sister ended up using it. And people wonder why I grew up depressed :P

 

When you don't have much, the only thing you have is your imagination. My mum's vacuum cleaner became a high-powered 7 in 1 multi rotation machine gun. My dad's old wallet became an incoming bat-creature bogey and my sister's shuttlecock became an ICBM.

 

I used to drive my parent's crazy, all the cushions in my house would come down, I'd build myself a fort complete with a hole to fit my cannon. An old drainpipe outside my house became the cannon.

 

It wasn't till I was about 12 before I got my first 'real' toys. By then I was so old the toys didn't even fit much anymore. I remember I got this gun, complete with gunpowder rings, which you could fire out rubber pellets with. More rubber bullets than could possibly hit a Pakatan protester hit my poor, poor dog. I also got firecrackers which I would pretend was firebombs and launch liberally towards my neighbours cat. Hey, I was 12!

 

Among other things that were the garden tool-toy collection I had. No, it's not a kiddie gardening tool set, rather a set of garden tools converted into toys. Plant markers became poison darts, rolls of fence became barbwire, my dad's rake; became a bishop's crozier (or a guitar depending on my mood) and my dog's kennel was ground zero. God, I pity the dog in retrospect now, I must've launched a million projectiles at it.

 

So pardon my raw green jealousy when I see kids these days walk around with their 400 ringgit Transformers la. My 'Transformers' toy was this cheap tractor robot that came free with Vitagen circa 1993.We have 12 year olds now walking around like freaking Inspector Gadget!

 

What happened to working hard? The only values parents teach these days to their kids seem to be the value of money.

 

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