Toys these days...

As I child, I enjoyed some toys. My favorite was a Discovery Toys marble maze thing where you could design different ways for the marble to run. I was a lover of dolls, that not so much for Barbie. I loved a good hula hoop and had quite a fondness for my baton. Not baton in the musical sense - good guess though. Baton as in what you might carry if you were the featured twirler with a marching band.

I found a great costume for a baton twirler months ago and have been on a bit of a quest to find a baton to accompany the good ol' outfit since May. My search has intensified since my Halloween party is tonight, in two hours... Not a baton to be found. Not for lack of trying, though. I've been to the mall toystore, Toys-R-Us, three Halloween shops, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Target, CVS, Walgreens and a sporting goods store. No baton to be found.

Toys these days are lamentable. They all come in those stupid plastic bubble containers - you know, the kind you could kill yourself on. There is plenty of Easy Bake shit, no shortage of branded toys (like a look-a-like Subway-make-a-sub-kit, just what you need for a better life), dolls like Bratz (which would be more aptly named Slutz) and plenty of make-up stuff. But no batons. Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be baton twirlers. Instead, I'll be carrying a pair of K-Mart poms poms and pining for the '80s, when being a baton twirler was easy.