Toy Story

Although I’m nearly halfway through living my twenties, I have yet to grow up. I say this because, as anyone who knows me can attest, I have few of the qualities that grown men exhibit. Not only might I reach my middle-age living out of the same bedroom in which I grew up, but the majority of my income goes not to health insurance premiums or electric bills, but rather to things that entertain me.

Aside from the standard fare of movie ticket stubs and video game discs, my purchases occasionally can go a step further into rather embarrassing waters.

Take, for example, an instance not long ago when I was walking around a department store. I’d originally gone to pick up replacements for several tattered pieces of clothing with split seams and stains I’d somehow convinced myself were still good enough to wear. I walked in with every intention of marching straight to the men’s department, but thanks to my cat-like curiosity and the insatiable need to look at things I have absolutely no reason to buy, I wound up snaking my way around the store, ending up in the toy department.

It was a couple months before the release of the Star Trek motion picture directed by J.J. Abrams, and the merchandising was out in full force. Not only were there colorful graphics placed above the aisle sections dedicated to tiny plastic phaser-wielding figurines, but entire endcaps had been erected in honor of what had been one of my all-time favorite childhood shows.

As a youth, I would fantasize not about scoring a winning touchdown in a Superbowl game, but rather I’d imagine myself commanding a spaceship, fending off an alien invasion and saving a distant planet. One of the main elements of my dream future was the spaceship, and so when I stood before the endcap and saw that there was a plastic replica of the iconic spacecraft from the movie, I had to have it.

Picking it up, however, I only stood there, considering myself. Here I was, standing in a toy department, well into my twenties and about to buy a toy rather than some much-needed clothes. Was I crazy, I had to wonder, for being stuck on such a choice?

My friend Michael shares a passion for collectibles, especially those of the science fiction kind. He once told me that, upon finding a toy that caught his eye, he decided to buy it. When his cashier bagged the item up and announced his total, she asked, “Did you need a gift receipt with that?”

“No,” Michael answered firmly, as if he were making a stand. “No, I don’t.”

I thought about him as I worried the box with my hands, wearing away at the edges of the packaging like a nervous thief. My feet shuffled back and forth, as if toeing an imaginarily line between justification and utter madness.

So what? I thought finally, and I walked up to the checkouts.

To this day, I have nowhere to move. I have no savings to speak of. All I have is a plastic light-up spaceship sitting on a bookshelf. That, and the hope that, if I can’t one day fly through space, defending alien civilizations, I can — at the very least — grow up.