Since the pandemic has robbed me of one of my favourite activities, rummaging through other people's unwanted items, I have taken to treating our attic as my very own charity shop where everything is free and the only good cause that is being supported is my entertainment. Pretty much every item I've ever owned is tucked away in a veritable landscape of cardboard boxes (you know how as a kid you'd make buildings out of boxes and pretend to be a giant? like that) and whilst some people might correctly identify this as a hoarding problem I've been having the time of my life rediscovering some of these things, some of which were huge parts of my childhood I had long forgotten about. Which brings me to this guy.
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| You know something is a big deal when I break out the glitter paper |
Yes, it's really him, the Talkboy. This was originally a prize in a Home Alone 2 sweepstakes competition and as far as I know was never available in stores in the Netherlands so for a very brief but happy time I genuinely thought this item was made specifically to be awarded to me and I was the only non-fictional child to actually own one, which I think says a lot about the kind of adult I turned out to be, but also how life pre-internet allowed for a certain kind of magical thinking that is now sadly lost forever.
It still had a tape inside and it took me quite a while to listen to it, mainly because like everyone else I hate hearing the sound of my own voice but also because that thing takes 4 whole batteries and in this USB powered new world that's just not something anyone just has on hand anymore. I was convinced it would be a recording of the high pitched squeaky voice "radio show" I used to record on it but actually it was a mixtape of songs that I recorded straight off the radio using the "Slow" playback option (yes, the "Credit card? You got it" one) so I could play them back at normal speed as an Alvin and the Chipmunks style rendition and laugh my little easily amused ass off. So much of my childhood (and I'll be perfectly honest: my teens) was spent playing with this thing and I'm not going to lie, I am kind of sad that I now have a computer that can easily give me a million renditions of mine and other people's voices, several of which are squeaky, but it would just not be the same. Maybe it's time to consider starting another hyper specific local radio station.
