Careful the things you say, children will listen

I remember this game, although I've never played it. I suppose the reason why I remember is says a lot about me, or at least the kind of child I was.

That reason I remember it is because it cost, if memory serves me right, £32.95. Now whilst that may not seem a particularly memorable figure, I'll have to put it in the context that my favourite toy at the time cost just a little less, and at that age I had yet to learn the lesson that expensive does not necessarily equate with good. So whilst looking through the Littlewoods winter catalogue (much more interesting than the disappointing summer catalogue which contained practically no toys) that was lying around the house, I was somewhat dismayed to find that there was a costlier toy.

Whilst I still loved my toy, the sheen had been taken off it a little. You mean I didn't own the most expensive toy anymore? You mean there are better toys? As the old saying goes, I was a child who knew the cost of everything but the value of nothing. But as fate would have it's way, I would soon stand corrected.

That toy, a Star Wars ATAT incidentally, was a birthday present from my Gran and was by far my favourite. It was big, with an articulated head and legs, and had guns which lit up and made noises. To my eight year old eyes it was just the bestest thing in the whole world ever. And it was from Star Wars too (well, The Empire Strikes Back as my eight year old self would have been annoyingly quick to correct). For a goodly while I carried it near everywhere with me, and one day I was staying with Gran along with my younger brother and elder sister (we all would stay round at Grans every friday night. She'd let us stay up late and watch tv and we loved her for it) and she told me about something that had happened when she bought the ATAT for me. She said that a small boy, my age, had been looking at the same toy when she'd bought it. He'd asked his parents if he could have it, but they said it was too expensive and dragged him away to look at £1 toys instead.

Despite being such a brief and simple story, it had a huge impact on me. I think that was the day I learned just how relatively privileged and fortunate I was. It had never occurred to me that I could have asked for something for my birthday and not gotten it. And I hadn't realised other children may not have been as lucky as myself. Oh, I'm sure I'd been aware of concepts like poverty, and that other families may not have been as well off as mine, but it was vague and abstract until then. I think it took a while for the full effects of that particular lesson to sink in, but gradually they did, and I began to consider other peoples perspectives.

There are some occurrences in my life that I can point to as definitive, life changing events - like learning to juggle, for example, a decision which spun my life (and probably several others too) into directions I couldn't possibly have foreseen. But there are other, subtler happenings that may have had equally profound effects. I'd like to think that was one - simply put, I'm not sure I'd be person I am today without it.

I'm not who I once was - I'm not the child I once was, although I don't suppose any of us are. I still have that ATAT somewhere. It's the only Star Wars toy, indeed the only toy from my childhood that I've held on too. But then it's not a toy anymore.

It's a reminder.