In the 1980s, I collected cheap, plastic charms, jelly bracelets, and rocks. Today, my youngest child collects expensive junk bought inside surprise bags and large, plastic eggs.
The surprise bags make my daughter happy. She collects entire sets of strange, colorful animals and figures, but I sometimes wonder if she would not be just as happy collecting things that were a little less expensive.
Rocks were always my favorite things to find. They were free and my mom had bought me a book on identifying rocks that kept me busy for hours after each rock hunting expedition.
I even took up fossil hunting in my teenage years. After all, the fossils were free to pick up and the trip only cost my friend and I a tank of gas to get there. We would spend hours picking away at the layers of a rock wall, talking about the cute boys in class, and chatting with strangers who would stop to see what we were doing and check out our ancient finds.
My mother’s generation collected stamps. She and her siblings would watch the mail for stamps with interesting and unique illustrations. Any letters from across the seas were instantly snagged up and the envelopes gently soaked to remove the lick and stick stamps.
Going back even further, children would collect cigar bands. This was popular in the 1910s, long before we realized that smoking was detrimental to our health and that children should not be exposed to the dangers of secondhand smoke.
Cigar manufacturers made it their business to get kids interested in collecting free cigar bands and some even held little contests for children. The Offterdinger cigar brand advertised a free watch to the boys and girls who collected a thousand watch bands and encouraged children to bug all the adult men in their families to hand over the bands.
A safer, more wholesome collection could be made from milk tops back in 1903. The trend at that time was to collect the paper stoppers used by dairies on their bottled milks and creams. Each dairy used its own labeling or design on the milk tops and children were driven to collect as big a variety as possible.
The milk top trend was so popular that some kids were using the milk tops like currency. Other children sold their most unique milk tops for a penny or more. They would follow the milk wagons as they made their home deliveries and stopped to ask the customers for the caps to add to their collections.
Of course, milk tops are a thing of the distant past and there is not much out there today that kids can collect for free, unless they turn to what nature provides.
That brings us right back to rocks, fossils, and, if you are fortunate to live by the shore, seashells. But my youngest is not interested in rocks or fossils and we are not that close to the shore. The dilemma of finding something free to collect made me search even harder for an object that would interest her.
I searched the internet for ideas and turned up empty. I talked to other parents, but they were stuck in the same surprise bag loop I was in.
I asked myself what was it about those surprise bags that she liked? It was the surprise. She did not know what she would get until she opened the bag. And that got me thinking about the surprises that can be found in nature and how, as a child, I would collect seeds from off the ground and plant them in pots and in my mother’s gardens. I wanted that surprise and I wanted to know what plant or tree was inside that little packaged seed.
Remembering the seeds, I had my daughter put on her shoes and coat and we went outside to look for any seeds that were left over from the winter months. After a short search, we found some old acorns and, instinctively, she picked them up and took them to my garden for planting.
The acorns were old and full of little holes from worms, but I said nothing. She wanted to get them into the chill ground as fast as possible so they would grow into a surprise tree.
The next day, I took her to the hardware store where the spring seeds were on display. Yes, it cost a bit of money to purchase the seeds, but she got to pick out a handful of seed packets for the same price as one of her egg surprise toys.
When we got back home, the bag of dirt and the little plant pots came out of the shed. Together we planted the seeds and gently watered them. It is now a waiting game to see what surprise we will get in the next few weeks.
Come summer, we will not only have some new plants in the gardens, but we will be able to collect our own seeds for the following year.
I called up some family members and asked them if we could take some plant clippings from their gardens over the summer. We not only got the okay to search through their gardens, but were offered clippings and baby plants from their indoor gardens.
My daughter now has spider plants, aloe plants, and jade plants in her living collection, and all of them were for free.
The excitement of collecting seeds and plants is growing with each new addition to our windowsills. And while my youngest still gets her pricey surprise bags on special occasions, it is the seeds and plants that get most of her attention.
After all, gathering a bunch of free things is so much more fun and satisfying than heading out to the store, grabbing something from off the shelf, and only having the surprise of opening it one time. And unlike my old rock collection (yes, I still have my rocks and fossils) and her collection of plastic things, the plants will never grow dusty or fall out of trend.
