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I was getting crushed. There’s no two ways about it—I was being soundly beaten at Ping-Pong by a man forty-five years my senior. I pride myself on being a good Ping-Pong player, but here he was, demolishing me. Serve, miss, point. Serve, miss, point. He was putting unbelievable English on the ball, and I didn’t stand a chance.
Of course, I was playing the master, the man who invented the game—the electronic version, that is. I was playing with Ralph Baer, […]

Continue Reading about Ralph Baer Brings His Brown Box to NCHEG Published on:
June 29, 2009

Let me confess—I’m a Blockhead. For those of you who don’t know what that means, it simply implies that I am a fan of New Kids on the Block. Jon, Jordan, Donnie, Joey, Danny, and I go way back to the summer of 1988 when their second album, Hangin’ Tough, dominated the pop charts. I had posters (over 200 of them in my bedroom), pillow covers, beach towels, T-shirts, ten-inch-diameter buttons, videos, dolls, action figures, scrapbooks from their concerts, […]

Continue Reading about OMG! It’s NKOTB! Published on:
June 12, 2009

I snagged my prom dress off the Macy’s sale rack for $26. What was wrong with that? Nothing, I suppose—until my mother discovered that I’d mentioned it in an interview with the local newspaper. Apparently, I should have kept my mouth shut when told that I looked like a million bucks. But whether you were a prom penny pincher like me or a big spender, your prom mementoes and memories belong here at Strong National Museum of Play.
For many of […]

Continue Reading about The Time of My Life? Published on:
June 1, 2009

At a loss for what to write next, John Steinbeck embarked on a tour of the country in 1960, accompanied by his standard poodle, Charley. The trip resulted in an extended meditation about the state of American life called Travels with Charley. Beyond the travelogue and observations that the book offers, Steinbeck shares numerous comments about his canine travel companion. The great novelist thought Charley was smarter than he was, in some respects. And when he looked into Charley’s eyes, […]

Continue Reading about Travels with Charlie Published on:
May 18, 2009

Donald Trump never knew how close he came to competing with me-and not because I wanted to play a boss on reality TV. No, the truth is that, as a kid, I dreamed of making it big in the world of high-profile architecture and real estate development. If things had worked out differently, I might have ended up going toe-to-toe with “The Donald” instead of becoming a museum curator. But show me a Kenner Girder and Panel construction set, and […]

Continue Reading about Building an Empire Published on:
May 5, 2009

Do you remember coloring pictures when you were a child? Does that unforgettable crayon aroma send you back in time? Coloring is one of the easiest and most economical ways for a child to discover his or her creative spark-and nearly everyone does it!
I vividly recall my childhood coloring experiences. I especially remember the day I watched my neighbor Laurie as she worked on her coloring book. First she would carefully and heavily outline a color area. Then she’d use […]

Continue Reading about Color Us Happy! Published on:
April 21, 2009

You mark time when you ride a bike. Your mind drifts. It’s the rhythm, probably, the lulling tempo. My mind drifts as I ride the paved path along the blue Niagara River. By late summer I’ve put another fifteen hundred miles on the tires. Biking has always been play to me and my autobiography is composed partly in a succession of bicycles.
My first bike was an ochre-colored machine with twenty-inch balloon tires and tan striping on the fenders. The color […]

Continue Reading about Bicycle Time Machines Published on:
April 2, 2009

Recently while visiting a friend, we began talking about Nintendo Wii. She noted that she had not purchased any video games for her six-year-old son yet and wasn’t sure if she wanted to. There was nothing unusual about this-many parents debate about when, or if, to buy video-game systems for their kids. What struck me as I looked around the room, however, was that her son already had a lot of electronic games-on a nearby shelf was a child’s play […]

Continue Reading about Are You a Gamer? Published on:
March 25, 2009

Since March marks both Women’s History Month and Barbie’s official 50th birthday, it seemed like the perfect time to combine the two and talk about Barbie’s many careers.
It’s a common assumption among people who follow societal trends that the average person has about five career changes in a lifetime. Barbie, however, definitely skews the data. Although she was originally designed and marketed as a teenage fashion model, Barbie has moved far beyond the catwalk. In the wake of the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Mattel began […]

Continue Reading about So Many Careers, So Little Time Published on:
March 3, 2009