I Got My Easy-Bake Oven 30 Years Late

Christmas is coming....the magical time of year when children are focused on Santa and the gifts they hope to receive. When I was a kid, I remember when I was six that I got a chalkboard (so I could practice being a teacher), a baby doll, a Barbie doll (what a mixed message that sends nowadays! Barbie has practically turned into a hooker, and don't get me started on the Bratz dolls....), a microscope so I could look at things (we found out 2 years later that I was nearsighted as a goose. It's a wonder I passed first grade), a sleeping bag (I camped out once in my life in a tent with a huge rock under my back, freezing all night), and a train set (which dad enjoyed 'helping' me with).

But for all the wonderful treasures I got.....I mean these were REAL toys that required that I physically interact or do something to get the fun out of them.....I did not get the one cherished item I had wished harder than anything for......an Easy-Bake Oven. You know, you hold a teaspoon of cake batter under a light bulb in a cute plastic box that looks just like mom's oven and then poof! Like magic, you have a wonderful cake the size of a quarter. Of course, the ad on TV seen through my (blind) child's eyes envisioned a full-sized cake like my grandmother made.

For many years after I was a little older, we laughed and joked about it. It was then forgotten until I was thirty-something and in nursing school. My parents reasoned that "well, you have everything you need and if you want something, we just go buy it nowadays instead of lusting for it for six months" during Christmas that year. So when gift-opening time arrived (yay! I still love presents! I'm a girl and a kid at heart-oh and wrap it pretty, like  you put your best effort into it so I will think it holds the Hope Diamond or something equally as amazing) I received a giant box. Beautiful paper, nice expensive shiny-sparkly bow in turquoise blue (my fave color)....oh wow, what was it??  A new computer??

Imagine my face when I opened it and saw.......an Easy-Bake Oven!!! I laughed until I almost cried. Well I wasn't about to wait. I plugged that thing in, added a teaspoon of water to the mix and voila! We soon had dried out chunks of tiny little cakes balanced on our fingertips. Dad was impressed that I managed to cook for once without burning the house down. Honestly, I'm convinced that this oven was specially boxed just for me. Santa found it in the back of his workshop many years later.....with the original cake mixes inside.

The Great Oven didn't go to waste, though. (We don't believe in waste). I gave it to a friend in my nursing class to give to her two young daughters. They had no clue what it was. The youngest one was trying to figure out if it was a computer or something.

Reminds me of my cousin, who's a couple of years older than I am. When her daughter was about eight, she came to mom's office and discovered the old IBM Selectric typewriter in the corner. We thought we'd hit the big time when we bought it. After all, it had two fonts when you changed the ball out. I think they were Pica and Elite. The child was mesmerized, so mom put some paper in and typed a sentence so she could see how it worked.

She turned to her mom and exclaimed, "Mom, we need to get one of these! That's better than your computer because it comes out right then. You don't have to wait on it to print out."

Sometimes I think the old stuff was better.