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Yes, I collect dolls, and I play with them too. It is not that I am suddenly turning female in second childhood, it is rather that as I near the ultimate end-of-life diaper time, I am taking things slower and appreciating everything.

I remember the mid-1990s.

At that time my wife noticed that I still had my childhood action figures and occasionally worked on restoring them. At the time those particular toys were hot collector’s items. With the internet came E-Bay, and with E-Bay came the power to find and collect old toys that were rising in value daily. Derfy nutcases like me were willing to spend actual money to revisit the toys of our youth. I bought things like the Captain Action vintage Superman costume, seen in my bedroom next to my hospital cup. My wife started the whole Barbie craze by buying some for herself and starting me on a downward spiral of me buying old and new Barbie dolls for her. That’s when the doll collection spiraled out of control. I did manage to sell some here and there and make a bit of money, but eventually, the collectors’ market dried up as nerdy derfs managed to spend all their money on dolls and couldn’t buy more.

I remember the mid-1960s when I loved G. I. Joe and Captain Action.

My relationship to toys goes back to a childhood where I basically had two younger sisters to play with. My little brother was eight years younger than me. So, most of the play time that wasn’t engaged in alone was all about me providing the adventure story that we were playing, and then directing my sisters either through my action figures and their Barbie dolls (Though one sister’s favorite was a Tammy doll) or through our imaginary selves to fight off the bog monsters, werewolves, and Nazi soldiers that tried to keep us from reaching our goals. We taught ourselves teamwork, problem-solving, and social skills by playing through fantasy adventures in the basement or in the yard, or, better still, in Grandpa’s barn.

I told you yesterday about Tagger, my toy tiger. I remember him as the longest-ago toy memory I can recall.

So, now that I’ve brought you all the way back to the 60s and the roots of my memories of playing with toys, let me explain to you why that’s been so much on my tiny old mind. My current WIP (Walnut Imitating Potatoes… no, correct that… Work In Progress) is called Fools and Their Toys. It is a story about desperately needing to communicate, even if you are a deaf-mute, an autistic young man, a victim of abuse, or a mentally challenged grown man. And the main character is a toy. That is, he is the narrator of the whole story even though he is actually a ventriloquist’s zebra puppet. I am not the only fool who plays with toys long past the appropriate age. And I have to tell this story because that’s the rule to this fantasy adventure game called life. Always play until the end. I have done that before. I am doing that still.

Here’s a link to help prove that playing with toys as a kid is not bad for you; https://wehavekids.com/parenting/How-Toys-Impact-Childrens-Development

I have a certain mania about hoarding old toys. My toys. My children’s toys. Other toys like abandoned toys from Goodwill and ReSale stores and liquidation toys from the bargain bins in Walmart and Toys-R-Us.

You see, the dependence on the importance in my life of people who are not real began with my own perceptions when the lights first went on in my little attic. Yes, my parents and my grandparents were real people. And I sometimes admitted, when forced, that my little sister was too. But so was Tagger, my own stuffed toy tiger.

I definitely treated him as my best friend and greatest confidant. I told him my troubles, and he protected me from monsters in bed at night. He often was included when I played with my sisters and their dolls. He was wise and brave and caring, and he talked with a voice that sounded very much like mine. In fact, I often think he was such a part of me that, when I no longer needed him in bed with me to help me sleep, I internalized him and he became a part of me. He did not meet his physical end until my parents had to leave Iowa and move to Texas while I was in grad school. What my sister did with his physical form, I really never wanted her to tell me. The house had to be cleaned out, and stuffed toys from the attic did not fair well.

I had almost given up ever being married and having a family when, at the age of 37, I finally fell in love, and then had a family, first of two, and then of three by the end of 1995. On the day my oldest son was born, as the doctor had told me to go home and get some sleep, I went to Walmart and bought a toy tiger. He was not orange like my Tagger, but white. He was about the same size as Tagger, and significantly larger than my infant son. Truthfully, neither number one son or number two son actually played with him. They slept with him and used him as a pillow, but they never even gave him a name. It was my daughter, my youngest child, who took him over and made him into a her. She named her Baby Tiger, loved her, talked to her, carried her around everywhere, and miraculously never loved her to pieces to the point that we don’t still have her 24 years later. The photos of her prove the miracle.

I am not Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame. But I do understand the importance of toy tigers. They help to make you who you are. And while they are technically not real people, technically you could argue, “Yes, they are too real!” and argue it very loudly. Of course, people will think you are a crazy fool if you do. But I doubt that changes anybody’s mind about Mickey.

I am a warrior of words. Yes, I fight them, cut them, make them bleed, and then put them into pretty paragraphs of purple paisley prose. Just like that.

But I also have a real life that pushes me and pulls me, makes me bleed, and do the thistly things that thoroughly threaten to make me poor and exhausted and eventually dead.

Yes, yesterday I had jury duty. In Denton.

I had to drive thirty miles on Interstate 35 only to get lost in downtown Denton looking for the county courthouse amidst construction barriers, curly-cue streets, and a GPS app on my phone that quit working just when I needed it most.

So, I finally find the proper place, find a parking space, stand in a long line to enter the building as the cold wind blew, and then negotiate a thorough near-strip-search security scan to get into that room full of potential jurors who fill all the seats and more. I felt a bit diabetically challenged, a little bit woozy. And then a woman behind me hits the floor from high blood pressure and has to be taken out by ambulance. We all have to wait for a longer time because of it, getting woozier all the while.

About 350 potential jurors for four jury pools that would need about 100 people to pick from. Of those, 48 would actually hear a case. So, all I had to do was sit and wait to find out that I was not picked. And I was released to go home, having earned six dollars for the day. Of course, they asked me if I wanted to donate it to a court-related charity. I did not. Dang! I earned that money!

And how, exactly, am I claiming to be a warrior of words with this essay? By taking this thistly experience and turning it into a blog post. A warrior fights his wars with the weapons he knows best.