2 years, 10 months.

Dear Jack,

Every time we visit my parents’ house, you take back with you a few souvenirs.

Typically, they are my old Hot Wheels from when I was about your age in the mid 1980s.

You now have so many toy cars that you regularly ask me:

“Daddy, where’d I get this one? It was yours when you was a boy?”

I’ll look over and see an orange paint-chipped Gremlin or Snoopy driving a tow truck (that was before Mater was cool) and reply, “That’s right: Nana and Papa got me that one when I was a boy, like you.”

You are lucky that my parents didn’t give away any of my childhood toys. So each time you visit their house, you can try out and even walk away with anything on display in the 1980s museum I grew up in.

“Hey, that’s a Smurf car!” you so excitedly announced, holding a red car being driven by Smurfette.

I guess you didn’t realize that Smurfs are in their offical comeback phase- that at one time, they were 20 times cooler than they are right now.

You like to take my ’80s cars into school each morning, only to store them in your cubby all day. I take it as a compliment. It’s your way of taking a piece of me with you each day when I can’t be with you.

Sure, it’s been a few decades since I’ve been a boy, but I can totally relate to your excitement about toys- especially ones from the ’80s.

It also subconsciously points to something we share in common: boyhood.

You recognize that I’m an adult, but you understand the concept that I was once a boy who was a lot like you:

I was a boy with an orange Gremlin and a Snoopy tow truck.

 

Love,

Daddy

 

 

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