Kids Are Toy Killers

Kids amaze me. They amaze me by how destructive they are. I take care of kids for a living.  At work, it's my job to keep toys and games tidy and ready for them to play with, and sometimes I really think it is hopeless!! Today, one of them came to me needing a repair for a rip in their Twister mat. How exactly the durable plastic of a Twister mat got ripped I'm not sure, but I have a feeling it had something to do with their mistaking it for a dance mat. Sometimes, I just watch them clean up their toys and laugh. I think children must have some kind of instinctive carelessness when it comes to their things. Or perhaps it's just that they haven't yet learned what we adults know: things cost money, and money doesn't come easy. If you break things that cost money, it's gone, and might not get replaced.

   Anyway, after the kids have "cleaned," and have all gone home, I go back, and with a sigh, clean up the mess they've made. I shake my head when I find broken crayons stuffed inside Lego blocks, board game pieces camped out in the crayon box, and dried-out markers sticking out of balls of drying out Play Dough. I don't understand how they don't understand that the bottom of a board game box is smaller than the top of it, and it doesn't fit over the top no matter how hard they try! While I'm taping up ripped box corners and counting game pieces, I look at the fish bowl. I laugh in wonderment that the poor fish is still alive. One of the older children who was entrusted with the task of feeding the class pet, over did it. What the poor fish hasn't eaten, he's swimming through or breathing through his gills. after fishing out the food pellets, I straighten up some some more. The play dishes look like they've been involved in some serious altercations with the play dough, and the toy food looks like some one actually tried to eat it! I hope their imaginations were stronger than their taste buds because it looks like someone got a big bite of plastic! What a mess!

I'm sure I killed my toys when I was little too. In fact, I know I did! Barbies never had clothes, and eventually all got "hair cuts." Once I even did "surgery" on Ken's "broken" leg just to see what his bones looked like. We didn't have such technology in barbie clinics as X-Rays. I "spaghettied" cassette tapes for the confetti-like quality and once, I jumped on my bean bag so hard, it exploded! Talk about confetti! Me and my friends would take our action figures and set them up on dirt piles just so we could throw mud and rocks at them. One time, I even helped my sister use permanent makers to give her baby dolls a "makeover."

I know most every kids does this.I did. you probably did, and I know the kids that are kids now sure do! I just say all that to say this: Now that  I'm a grown up, I think kids are toy killers.