Toys

My wife and I seldom pay attention to the roving exhibitions in shopping arcades. This said, I admit there are good ones around. The other day, for example, we were walking home when we saw an exhibition about local toys from the days of yore. It's hard to walk away without staying behind to go over the sweet memories of long-ago toys.

Years passed. Five. Ten. And decades. Some childhood memories – in particular, with our toys – are engraved in a way we know will never fade. Absurd as the image is, it's often a small toy that lasts the longest in our closet of memory. It might take the form of a used chess set (as what we hear from Amy Tan's Rules of the Game) with dog-eared instruction book, and missing pieces of black pawn and white knight. The weird truth is that most children have their own way of having joy.

I didn't come from a rich family, but I never complain about being brought up in a public housing estate. One of my toys was the door key of my dad. By the end of the day, my father came home and couldn't wait to see us; he held out his bunch of keys a long way down the corridor. Clang, clang, clang. Wait! My brother, sister and I would then listen carefully to the sounds of footsteps and the clanging of keys, trying our best to be the first one in the family to call out loud "Papa." Bingo!