yahtzee and dolls and trains - oh my!

I forgot how much fun yo-yos are. Whoever invented them surely was a genius.
I was reminded today about the simplicity of childhood. About how fun things can be even though they are simple.
My brother's school had this guy come and do this team-building slash personal growth assembly and it involved yo-yos. Ironically, the same guy came to my private Catholic school in Massachusetts 7 years ago. And I got a really cool yo-yo from him.
My brother got one too, but it's defective, so we're returning it for a new one. Anyways, he brought up this little bag of yo-yos we have in the basement and I found my tire-shaped yo-yo. And I put my finger through the hole in the string and started yo-ing. And I forgot how addicting it is to yo (I realized the last four words of that sentence were only 2 letters long)!
I then started yo-ing as I was reading new tweets and then our cat came up and started trying to get the yo-yo. I think he just wanted to the string. But he played with it for like 20 minutes while I yo-ed. If you ask me, I would get pretty frustrated if I was trying to get something that kept flashing in my face and then retracting into the air.
I realized that playing with that yo-yo gave me a childlike satisfaction I haven't had in a while. It made me reevaluate my life. Girls analyze things. It's what we do.
All I really do is go to school, use my iPad, the computer, my textbooks, watch TV, an go swimming. I don't really ever do anything that isn't electronic. But some of the best things are not electronic. Like yo-yos.
When all we do is check our emails, refresh Twitter, post new updates and check statuses on Facebook, look things up, and check our texts, we are just becoming obsessive and ridiculous. Kids these days don't pull out yo-yos on the school bus - they pull out their iPods. Kids are more apt to sit inside and watch TV than go outside and play or even sit inside and play a game - a non-electronic one.
While we may think of yo-yos as a thing of the past - ancient, prehistoric, medieval novelty items - it feels good to be a kid - not an alienated techno-gadget freak kid of the new age, but a kid. You know, one who plays with toys you don't have to plug into the wall or shove batteries into.
So find some of your old toys and games. Blow the dust off the top and they're good as new. Yahtzee, Pick-Up-Sticks, yo-yos, dollhouses, train sets. I doubt most kids play with or even own these things anymore.
Let's put down the iPhones, the Blackberrys, and yes, even our 7.000 GB iPads, and play with our old-fashioned toys.