I have been watching the old stopmotion Christmas show "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" with my kids this Christmas.
As I watched, I remembered watching it as a child. I was so traumatized by the forgotten misfit toys on their little island. I think that show singlehandedly convinced me that inanimate objects have feelings. If I ever had a broken or unused toy, I had a very difficult time getting rid of it because I was just sure that they would be sad if I threw it away.
One Christmas, I was given a Cabbage Patch Kid. Santa had left it in the box, so it's defect went unnoticed. I was undoing the twist ties to get her out of the box, and her head tipped forward. The machine that had sewed her hair to her head had gone too deeply, or maybe made the stitches too close together (?), and she had this huge gash along the back of her head where the hair was attached to the base of her head. It was deeply unsettling to the point of terrifying to a little kid. We exchanged the doll (wait, how come we were able to go to Toys R Us and provide a receipt?!), but I felt incredibly guilty. I INSISTED on picking out the exact same doll- same outfit, hair, everything. I then changed her name to what the original doll had been, even though I hadn't really even like the original name.
To this day, I have a difficult time of letting things go. As I've thought about it and watched the show, I realized that this show was instrumental in creating my pack rat issues. If I have something I no longer need, I want to keep it, just in case. It could still be useful, given the right circumstances.
On a lighter note, as an adult watching the show, I was kind of disgusted with Santa and Rudolph's father. They were a bunch of narrow minded idiots on that show. Irritated me.
No, I refuse to seek therapy because I internalized a silly kids' show from the 60s.
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