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What were some of your favorite things to play with as a child? My brother and I enjoyed using big boxes to build a spaceship and travel to another planet. Mud pies in the backyard were fun too. I can't really think of a favorite toy that my parents bought at the toy store when I was young. What were some of your favorites? Were they "store bought" toys or "homemade" toys? 

When I was a kid I grew up on a lake with fun neighbors to have adventures with. It was almost like a page out of Tom Sawyer, only less gold and thieves and such. I had an inflatable dinghy that we used to explore the lake in. We would fish from it and swim around with it. Sometimes we filled it with water and turned it into a moving fish tank.

Our favorite toy was a giant block of styrofoam. It was about 10 feet long by 3 feet wide and we used it as a raft to paddle around in. We would dive off it, push it around the lake, and most importantly play king of the kill on it. It was a lot of fun because moving too fast would make the whole raft shift and knock people off. You could also flip it completely over and send everyone into the water. I think I had more fun with that styrofoam chunk than many of my other toys.  

I don't remember my toys much, but I'm sure I had many less than my son has!

What I remember is the time I was sitting on the floor in my dark bedroom closet pretending I was an astronaut, all alone in outer space, with no response on the radio from Houston. That thread of imagining started to creep me out a little bit, so--being a brave astronaut--I decided I'd sing to myself to bolster my morale.

So there I was, a strange little 5-year-old girl sitting alone in the dark, on the floor of my bedroom closet belting out "Waltzing Matilda" ... when my sister opened the closet door.