Dead Ringer

Not literally dead, of course. Just gone to heaven to entertain kids over there.
Nor is it much of a figurative ‘dead ringer’ –although my dear father was wondering whether it was an actual telephone. But then again, he did provide my sister and me with two discarded Real Telephones to play with, when we were kids. One painted red and the other blue –the phones, not us. So I totally understand it’s a grey area for him –figuratively, because literally it would be purple.

I don’t think I ever played with the Fisher Price Chatter Telephone myself, but somehow other people’s nostalgia has contaminated me to such a degree that this little toy evokes vivid fake memories of a childhood that never was.

The Chatter Telephone was born years before myself, in 1962. This particular specimen is one of the first generation, with a wooden body. Which Fisher Price would never get away with today –heaven forbid your little one gets a splinter!

Deconstruction has been a bit slow the past week, due to other creative endeavours (for my Dutch readers: Sinterklaassurprise). But that will soon be over and then it’s on to another piece of nostalgia I never personally played with: rollerskates. The metal kind you strapped under your shoes, not the flashy shoe-included ones with their lethal nosebrake from the eighties. (I did stand on a skateboard once though, for a split second. I think I have one of those lying around in the deconstructionroom somewhere…)