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Monday, October 30, 2023

#MicroblogMondays: Plus ca change...

When my sister & I were little, the arrival of the Christmas catalogues from the big department stores -- from Eatons, Sears and, from the U.S., Sears Roebuck -- was a major event, eagerly anticipated. We would pore endlessly over the pages, jam-packed with toys of every description, and flag the ones we wanted -- one of us would use an X and the other a check mark, or a circle. (Hint, hint, Mom & Dad.)  The small rural towns on the Canadian Prairies where we grew up in the 1960s and 1970s were miles away (often hundreds of miles away) from department stores of any size, let alone dedicated toy stores, so the catalogues presented a spectacular display of riches, abundance and possibilities.  

Those thick, fat catalogues have mostly gone the way of the dodo bird (not to mention the department stores themselves -- RIP, Eatons and Sears Canada, among others).  So I was both surprised and amused when we walked in to BIL's house two weekends ago after dinner for coffee -- the kids and grandkids were all there too -- and were greeted by a very excited Little Great-Nephew, clutching -- of all things -- a CATALOGUE. From Amazon!  (Who else these days, right?)  It was far slimmer than than the gloriously fat catalogues of my childhood, but there were still pages and pages of toys to keep a clearly dazzled LGN preoccupied for most the time we were there. 

LGN was mesmerized, and insisted on sitting down with every adult in the house, one by one, to page through and show us all the toys he wanted. By which I mean pretty much all of them, of course, lol.  

It's nice to know that some things haven't changed -- that catalogues still exist (in some form), and that, in the age of the Internet and Amazon, they still have the power to enchant a young child.  :) 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here

2 comments:

  1. Ha! I get the Amazon toy catalogue too, although why I can't imagine (I must be on some list because I'm a teacher and/or have bought presents for kids in my life). It cracks me up every time, but there's just something about looking at shiny pages! I remember the JC Penney's catalogue, a GIANT thing with just so many sections. I love catalogues for gardening things and plants (my toys now) and housewares, and Bas Bleu, which is a wonderland of books and book lover goodies. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside to imagine LGN toddling around with his book o'toys!

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