I was, to put it mildly, a sedentary baby.  I was born (as my mother never fails to remind me) six weeks late.  Not totally sure where the range of synthetic oxytocin products were in rural Ontario in 1982, but whatever. Adam says that I didn’t bother getting around to the whole birth thing because it was warm and comfortable so why bother?
As a neo-nate I didn’t take much interest in toys.  Unlike other babies this was not due to a fascination with my own hands, or because I was busy biting the dog; I was just happy to lay on the floor with nothing to entertain me but my own pre-pre-pubescent thoughts.  Every so often I would turn my head slightly to look at a toy on the other side of the room.  This gave me great joy (or as close to joy as an even-keel baby experiences).  I didn’t really want to play with the toy. I didn’t want to shove it into the sopping wet hole in my face that I would grow to call a mouth.  I had absolutely no interest in learning to crawl in order to drag my hulking, diapered girth to it.  I was just happy to know that toys existed.  I had a very intellectual relationship with them, and to this day the toys of the 80’s do not drive me to distraction the way they do so many. Things picked up for me toys-wise as a toddler when I discovered the Tupperware drawer and the joy of cardboard boxes, but those are really posts unto themselves.
So I have decided that if fame and fortune don’t find me as a teacher at a non-profit Christian high school in the sticks, I will next try my hand as a toy maker.  Not your flashy, noise-making, light-blinking, polyvinyl chloride children’s toys that are so busy they are infusing our next generation with ADHD and diabetes and probably a heightened sensitivity to bee stings.   No, I will design toys for people like me. I will ride on the coattails of the recent nostalgia-sopping resurgence of Transformers to release my patented line of Stay-Stillers: They’re Exactly What Meets the Eye. One could collect all 8. The House Plant, The Foot Stool, The Non-Oscillating Fan, The Adult Sized Shoe, The Couch Cushion, The Desk Lamp, The Bookshelf, and the newly released Ball of Fluff.  I hope to premiere my line of Stay-stillers with Mattel in spring 2011.