There is a black hole of toys somewhere in my house.
If it’s not a black hole than its Casper the Toy Hiding Ghost. Or maybe there is an alternate plane of reality in the basement of which I am unaware. Or one of those secret cupboards hidden in the back of the closet. I’m leaning toward the paranormal because I’ve seen the blueprints for our house but I suppose one can never be certain…
In any case, there is some sort of top secret “Area 52” in my home where all good toys go to die. I know that I am not the only one who has one. In fact, at a recent wedding shower with friends, another gal mentioned cleaning out a game cupboard and finding three INCOMPLETE Scrabble games. Honestly, People. Does the “Z” chip really just get up and traipse across the “Double Word Score” to freedom?
I don’t think so.
Before children, these things rarely (if ever) came up missing. Now, a pair of matching Barbie shoes is a miracle worthy of papal attention.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been doing some fall cleaning now that the kids are back in school. I have already made two trips to the local Goodwill and now I am left with the stuff that I can’t figure out how to dump.
It causes me too much guilt.
I just can’t leave games with missing pieces at the VOA Store. It seems like a mean trick to dupe a fellow bargain seeker into buying a Disney Princess game that simply cannot be played properly without the totally unique eight-sided glass slipper die.
You have GOT to have the glass slipper die. Things wouldn’t be right without it.
I can’t throw these things away, either. I actually have nightmares about all of those bright little plastic bits languishing in a dump for all eternity. It’s like Wall-E in my head but without the cute soundtrack and happy ending.
I could just buy another game and merge the two but then I would still have an incomplete set and you can see what sort of an Idiot Circle that could quickly turn into.
I could also probably order just the pieces that I need on-line. And then pay $5 in shipping for a .25 part.
Sorry, but I am just too cheap for that kind of crazy behavior.
So, I did the only thing that I could reasonably do. I set out in search of the…
TOY BLACK HOLE (insert ominous piano chord series here).
This was a quest worthy of Frodo Baggins and his crew of weirdoes (except for the elf - who I still have a teeny crush on). And, boy, did I need me a magic wizard in the lead.
I don’t know if our house will ever be the same.
In case you are thinking of repeating the same mindless search in your house, here a few of the places I checked: pulled out all major appliances, looked inside the heat vents, poked through the contents of the vacuum, raked the sandbox, lifted all of the mattresses, and completed 47 puzzles in search of one missing piece.
To no avail.
I did find an unsuspected cache, albeit an obvious one. While vacuuming under the couch, I bumped my hand against the fabric base of the furniture and heard a little jingle. I reached in from the top and found all the pieces and parts I was missing the LAST time that I went on this rampage - I mean, cleaning binge – as well as a set of Pampered Chef bamboo tongs that I am pretty sure have been missing since New Year’s 2007. Upon hearing this good news, my husband (in a fit of genius) took his pocket knife to the fabric covering the bottom of the couch so that future bits and parts lost in this manner would fall directly to the floor. Not normal. Just necessary. In fact, one would think that furniture manufacturers would have discovered this faulty engineering decades ago.
Seriously, Peeps. It takes a mom.
So, absent any other options, I’ll just throw this out to all my readers…
Anyone need four red “Battleship” pins and a 150 piece dog puzzle that’s missing one corner?
Yeah. I didn’t think so…
