Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Recreation Majors do this...

And think it's (kind of) fun...


Last week at my "summer job" (a company that rents vacation essentials like bikes, linens, toys, beach gear etc) I got to inventory the toys that go in the "Box 'o Fun" that people can rent for their little ones. I counted, repaired, and sorted toys ranging from See 'n Say's to kitchen toys leaving the toy pictured above for the very last. 

We didn't have many "mainstream" toys when I was a kid. (We had farm animals, ponies, dogs, bikes, skateboards, and room to run - no need for much plastic crap.) So looking at a laundry basket full of Mr & Mrs Potato Head parts was a little overwhelming. I don't actually remember ever even playing with M/M PH at friends' houses so I wasn't even sure what parts they were supposed to have. So when I finally had no other toys to inventory... I just started sorting - lips with lips, left arms, right arms, pink tongues, red tongues, earrings (yeah - who knew potatoes wore earrings?!), purses, sunglasses, feet, teeth... And so on. It was kind of a gruesome forensic study of the child's toy!

Once sorted I just made sure that each head had at least one of each item. In the end, I ran out of right arms and eyeballs so I had to stop. I mean... who wants to put together a Potato Head and find it's missing a vital part?! I managed to put together 17 whole sets before returning the remaining body parts to a large bag to be saved for replacing parts. "Parts is parts" - the old chicken nugget commercial kept coming to mind as I loaded the bag...

So, for all the people that used to ask me how my degree in "recess" is treating me, I'd say "Just fine! Did you get to play at work today?"

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