4. Circling All the Stuff Our Moms Would Never Buy Us
Turning on your preferred Kelly Clarkson album and spending hours leafing through catalogues to circle all the toys and devices you so sorely wanted was the most entertaining thing you could do. Presenting those circles to your parents with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop was naturally what followed. Mom and dad never seemed to get you one thing, no matter how much you begged and pleaded.
The regular lists of today will never match the classic 90s magazine circle wishlist. Moreover, creating an online wishlist on Amazon took hours; this was just far more enjoyable. Physical circling objects in a catalog was gratifying and tactile. This custom marked the seasons: the appearance of the Sears Wishbook meant Christmas was approaching, while other catalogs signaled the beginning of back-to- school buying. We would spend hours reading over every page, picturing how each gadget or toy may revolutionize our life. Circulating was a practice in imagination and hope. The prospect was sufficient to inspire our fantasies even if we knew deep down we wouldn't receive most of the things we circled. It also taught prioritizing: knowing you couldn't have everything, which objects would you circle with the red pen to indicate they were very unique? Childhood consumerism was built on this basic activity, which taught us about want, disappointment, and occasionally the delight of acquiring that one unique object we had been looking at for months.
