Objects of envy

For some reason, I've been reminded lately of various things I used to covet when I was a child.  Things I saw other people had and yearned for myself, while resigning myself to never having them.  They included:

• A treehouse
• Those red-and-yellow plastic cars you could peddle around
• A scooter (the kind you push, not motorized)
• The board game Clue
• The game Battleship (we eventually acquired it)
• Video game consul -- an uncle actually provided us with a Sega, which was HUGE.
• Salami sandwiches for lunch
• A microwave (got one later)
• Cable (read: Nickelodeon).  That was one of the treats of visiting Grandma Weaver.  We got it when I was in high school.
• A CD player.  It was mega-big when I got a Diskman for a teenage birthday.

Looking back at these, I'm still keen on most of them -- so at least I wasn't a massive victim of '80s/'90s fads, right?  Oh wait, now I'm remembering trolls...

Standards and envy are entirely relative, of course.  Recently, I was explaining to a friend that my nuclear family tends to cling to technologies -- that is, we are late adopters.  Our household phones were rotary types, and all our home movies -- through our late-1990s trips to national parks! -- were filmed on a silent Super-8 camera.  I'd gotten this far in the explanation when my friend cut in to say that it was actually pretty advanced for us to have home movies at all.  He's a full 6 years younger than me, and there are NO moving images of him as a child.  Seriously?

Anyway, while I had a pretty awesome childhood, I don't regret growing up, because look at all the freedom you have!  You can decide exactly what you do, where you go and how you get there, and you can buy the object of your desire if your bank account will allow it.  Fortunately, I'm not prone to overspending, but I still got a thrill today out of buying some plastic storage containers to organize my stuff better.  It's more controllable than the editing, after all.  One week before the draft goes to my supervisor!