Calici the Rabbit and Friends

So today, my dear mother decided to have a garage sale. And by that, I mean she decided a week ago and the thing was today, but anyway. So we’ve spent the past few days sorting through junk in the garage, deciding whether or not to sell it, and putting on the little yellow price stickers.



Pictured: a freaking pain in the behind. It's hard enough just trying to get them out of the little dispenser.



While searching through the masses of junk and slowly getting covered in yellow stickers, I came across three toys of great significance in my childhood:

• A small, multicoloured elephant
• A blue magnadoodle
• A white rabbit (or, at least, it was white once. It was now a murky grey.)

Bam went the wave of nostalgia, and thus, I bring you more traumatising childhood memories…


The small, multicoloured elephant:

One of my earliest memories was of the day my birthmother and my brother William came to visit- David can’t have existed by this point, so I can’t have been that old. I remember him being a picky eater and refusing to eat the onions on his pizza. I also remember playing on the couch with him. I’m not sure exactly what we were playing. It appeared to be some sort of horrible murderous death game in which William kept dying. (This was nothing to do with me. He was, and still is considerably stronger than me.) Anyway, overprotective of him as ever, it was Super-Elephant to the rescue. I’m not entirely sure how Super-Elephant rescues dead Williams, but I do remember that Super-Elephant’s main form of transportation was using his ears like Dumbo to fly towards my brother, who miraculously came back to life, only to die again by launching himself of the couch like a lemming. Only it turns out lemmings are not suicidal and that the famous footage was created by throwing them off a cliff. Make that two Disney references thus far in my post.



No, I do not really know what lemmings look like. In every other regard, however, the scene looked exactly like this.




The Blue Magnadoodle


Magnadoodles were a little like Etch-a-Sketches back in the day, but with more scope for creative expression, mostly because rather than using little knobs, you were provided with a magnet pen which allowed you to create intriguing, thought-provoking artwork. For example:

It was the shiz.



The (formerly) white rabbit

It was a gift given to me when I was little, so little that I forget who gave it to me or the circumstances surrounding it. I do know that it was shortly after seeing Alice in Wonderland (Disney reference number three) on video, which I hadn't particularly enjoyed, that I received it, as I was originally going to name it "The White Rabbit." (Originality was not my strong point at that stage of my life.) Even then, however, I didn't like the name.

Shortly after, we went to stay with my Aunt Diana for a few days. Now, this was around '96 or '97, at any rate, during the heyday of the Calici virus. For those of you that are somewhat uneducated, it would pay to do a little googling. At any rate, it was a virus that caused bunnies to die somewhat horrible deaths, which was good news for the farmers, because rabbits are a pest. I'd heard it been talked about on the news a little, although I was far too young to comprehend what any of it meant. So when Diana suggested I name the toy bunny Calici, I thought it was a beautiful name for a rabbit. Which just goes to show what sort of a childhood I had.


   At any rate, the garage sale is over, and I made a total of $24, which I will probably blow on either cocaine, hookers, or cheese. Except I can't afford cocaine or hookers, nor do I have an interest in them very much, so cheese it shall be.

Hurrah!