The remote control car pictured above was given to my husband for Christmas one year. My mother-in-law gave matching cars to him and his brother so they could race them around the house. A great idea for children under ten, but for adults in their twenties and thirties the idea was laughable. They both just gave each other looks at the suggestion and placed the cars beside the piles of clothes and house-hold items they'd already unwrapped. Unfazed, my mother-in-law touted how they were indestructible and could crash into anything. She nearly begged them to open the boxes and begin the races.
The car traveled home with us, never opened, and found a place on top of one of the cabinets that came with our apartment. It remained there until the yard sale I had a few weeks ago. An overprotective grandmother dragging two young children, a boy and a girl, inspected it for much too long before saying she'd buy it. "I need to talk to their mother first," she said and disappeared again. She returned a short while later. She asked the little boy if he'd use it. He didn't speak, but just looked as wide-eyed and scared as his sister who was clutching the bunched up fabric of her dress, looking close to tears. "It doesn't say what age on it," she said. I decided not to point out the giant 3+ on the front in case the boy was 2 1/2. "I'm sure he won't hurt himself with it," I reasoned. "It's indestructible," I said, intoning my mother-in-law, laughing silently to myself at a joke she didn't understand. She gave me three dollars for it, even though I'd asked for five, but I was so grateful to let it go I would have given it away for free. "Let grandma hold it," she said tucking it under her arm so she could take the tiny hand of each child in her own. "Let's go get you your carriage," she said to the girl, leading the way up the small hill beside my driveway.
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