![\"ellen-dan-christmas-72\"](\"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/ellen-dan-christmas-72-200x300.jpg\" "\\"ellen-dan-christmas-72\\"")
<\/a>Fast forward to present day: Aunt Mary scanned some old pictures and forwarded them to the family. \u00c2\u00a0Check out Aunt Ellen’s hair from Christmas of ’72. \u00c2\u00a0Spectacular, isn’t it? \u00c2\u00a0It’s like an alien spaceship landed on her head for an extended visit.<\/p>\n\u00c2\u00a0I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the baby in the picture; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m almost 9 months old. \u00c2\u00a0Once I got over the spectacle of the beehive, my gaze drifted to the toy that so clearly has my attention back in 1972. \u00c2\u00a0My jaw dropped.<\/p>\n
There’s the cube. \u00c2\u00a0I’m a few months old, and I’m playing with the cube. \u00c2\u00a0Thirty-five years later, Grandma asked me to pick something, and the one thing I asked for was the cube I’d played with as a baby.<\/p>\n
It makes me wonder about brain development and memory. \u00c2\u00a0It’s just a simple plastic cube, but it’s captured my attention for decades. \u00c2\u00a0Do I still like it because I have associated good memories somewhere? \u00c2\u00a0Or am I hardwired to enjoy bouncing ball-bearings?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After my grandfather died, my grandmother was ready to get rid of a lot of the “stuff” the family had accumulated in the 65 years they’d lived in the house on Abbott road. \u00c2\u00a0I would visit my grandmother and she’d tell me to “Pick something and take. \u00c2\u00a0Find something you like and take it with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":510,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"ballbearingtoy\"](\"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/ballbearingtoy.jpg\" "\\"ballbearingtoy\\"")
<\/a>I thought about it. \u00c2\u00a0It didn’t take long to think of the toy. \u00c2\u00a0It’s a small, clear, plastic cube, a few inches on each side, with a ton of small metal balls inside. \u00c2\u00a0The inside of the cube has a bunch of interlocking “steps” of clear plastic. \u00c2\u00a0You flip the cube over, and the balls loudly cascade down the steps. \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n