At an early age, my parents introduced my brother and me to different things to keep us busy. The first one was a kit to put a gray plastic plane together. It came with a small tube of glue. I would work on it hours at a time.
I was pretty careful to glue the wings. That glue was sticky and once two of my fingers got glued together. My father asked if I wanted to do another airplane and I said “no thanks, I will move on to something else.”Who knew years later I would take thousands of airplane rides?
Then there was Play-doh. This was right up my alley. It came in so many colors. After doing a little sculpture you just pulled it apart and put it back in the cans. Let me ask you…did you ever taste play doh? Actually it was not bad but a little salty for my taste.
Then I started making key chains. You would take multi colored lanyard and braid them into different shapes. If you made a mistake you had to pull the whole thing apart and start over. Some of my friends did very intricate ones and tried to help me. I ended up giving them the lanyards and wished them good luck.
I loved chewing gum. Someone taught me how to make gum wrapper chains. I was pretty good at this. But you had to chew alot of gum ….and all that chewing made my gums hurt.
Once I was walking through the airport in Newark, New Jersey and this couple… they made gum wrapper purses … belts and other accessories. The purses had a zipper so you would really use it as a purse. The couple asked me to pick out one as a gift. I told them no thank you but I would buy some.
They gave me their card and I called them and ordered more. Everyone was in love with their products. When I was around 9 there was a box under the tree that was nicely wrapped with my name on it. You know when you are a kid you shake boxes. This box sounded like whatever was in it was broken.
When I opened it. …it was a puzzle. I had never seen one before. I still remember what my first puzzle looked like. It was a landscape with trees, mountains, a lake and a deer. The first thing you have to do is find all the edges of the puzzle. This puzzle was 500 pieces. I kept cheating and looking at the picture on the front of the box I would go to bed at night thinking about this puzzle. After I finished I put all the pieces back in the box and gave it to someone in my class.
My second puzzle was the skyline of New York City. This was 750 pieces. This was a little more difficult. But I kept at it and I finished that one too. To be continued…
Love,
Richard
