Traditions

When I transitioned into fatherhood, one of the things I was looking forward to was exposing my son to the things I had when I was a kid. Despite my desire to never sound like my parents when they told me everything was better in their day, I did have this strong feeling that so much of what I had growing up was, indeed, "better".

Easier said than done. The movies, cartoons, and toys have all evolved so much since the classics I enjoyed years ago.

It seemed the more I tried to find games, old school blocks and trikes (the ones that got me through my early years) the more obvious it seemed that maybe I needed to get with the times, and move on. They just were not available at the big box stores and the mega marts.

But when Claudia and I started looking at the catalogs available to us when we were ordering for our store, and digging into the inventories of the thousands of companies selling toys in the US and Europe we realized the good stuff, the classic stuff, was out there, it just needed a showcase. A place to shine.

When my son Sebastian and I experience a toy or game that I loved as a kid, it is such an important connection. It is about bridging time through wooden cars or metal robots.

At least once a week a parent will come in to aMuse and say "I didn't know they still made this! This was my favorite toy growing up!"

The connection, that continuation of a tradition, is what I think of on Fathers Day. Trying to remember what my Grandfather and my father taught me, so I can try to pass it along to my son.