The Stick

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Entered into the Toy Hall of Fame in 2008 it is now available everywhere. In fact it has been available in your local woodlands for ever and has been used by children as a toy for centuries if not millennia.

I know that the above is a little tongue in cheek but it is true that the stick was inaugurated into the Toy Hall of Fame in 2008 as a favorite child's toy. One can but wonder though why it took them that long to realize that.

One of the first toys that children, especially the boys, seem to pick up when they get out of doors is a stick and it becomes all manner of imaginary things, a gun, though rather frequently, being just one them.

As children we made ample use of sticks for toys, as they came, or we turned those sticks, with a little help of a (pocket)knife into just what we wanted them to be, including catapults (slingshots) for hunting, digging sticks, and much more.

It must be something deep in our psyche but when going into the woods one of the first things most kids do is to pick up and good sizable stick and to use it as a walking stick, as a staff.

Not much has changed as to that even in our modern age of computers and games consoles and it is good to see that, for sure, and thus the stick definitely deserves a high place in the list of toys.

© 2013