Cabbage Patch Kids & Muppet Babies

What a week. I've been playing tour guide to my loverly cousin Lindsey and her boyfriend John. These are two of my very favorite people on the whole planet and I am so endlessly stoked they could come visit.

I won't even attempt to recap the whole visit; there's too much to tell. But in short? We tromped. And galavanted. And meandered. And moseyed (who knew that was the past tense of mosey?). We ate. And ate. And ate. And then we ate some more.

But the highlight of the trip? My most favoritest part? When Lindsey and I got into a time machine and traveled back to our childhood.

See, Linds and I are only two years apart and we are like sisters. Most of my childhood memories are shared memories with Linds and, like sisters, our dynamic is based on that shared experience. We have a psychic connection and our own language comprised of the shorthand of inside jokes and knowing looks. We can have a conversation without even speaking. Just ask our friends at dinner the other evening how freaky it is when you catch us in the right mood and one of us dares to utter one word (gigglebug) and we burst into peals of uncontrollable, gasping for breath, tears down the cheeks laughter.  Happens every time.

So when Linds and I were wandering in a random antique store and saw this:

We were instantly excited. 

And as we scoured the shelves of our childhood for our own childhood mementos, our voices became those of an 8 yo and a 6 yo. Squealing with delight.

With the feel of the familiar plastic and the smell of playgrounds and classroom cubbies, it was 1987 again.

And then I found one of my old lunch boxes. The exact one I carried daily to the lunch tables every day.

It even still had the thermos inside. 

Linds couldn't find the only one she'd remembered having. But then she found this:

The thermos to her old lunch box. The very one. She really loved the Muppet Babies.

And we were happy kids.

But it didn't end there. We turned around to find:

Which may seem like nothing much, but we had those toys. And suddenly I was in my childhood bedroom, playing with Linds for hours. I could feel the familiar carpet under our butts. I couldn't even touch those toys, but I could feel the plastic grooves under my fingers that I'd felt hundreds of times before.

At this point, I forgot I had a camera because I really was a 6 year old again. We began tenaciously hunting the shop for more of our old toys and we found almost all the pieces that went with the first toys we found.

I found the Little People house that I remembered so well: the doorbell that I'd chimed, the little windows, the TV painted on the wall. The color was wrong though. My house had been blue, not yellow. Then I found the barn that went with the house. And I remembered that the door mooed when you opened it. It still did, though disturbingly. Then we found the little people. And the animals. And we wanted nothing more than to take all the pieces and find a spot on the floor and play.

We honestly considered buying back our childhood. We could dedicate a room and fill it with our childhood things and go and play and be little and carefree again.

But we didn't. Because that would be crazy.

But don't think we weren't tempted. It was an awesome feeling. Such palpable memories engrained in plastic and paper.

I dare you to hold a childhood memory in your hand and not be instantly transported back to when you played with it daily.

Also: have I mentioned how much I love this girl?

My cousin, my sister, one of my best friends. She knows me better than anyone. 

Only Linds could understand the glee of our experience yesterday. Only she could go with me back in time to our shared experience. The hours and hours of make believe and gigglebugs. 

I said I don't believe in soul mates. But if I have one, it's this girl.