Recently one of my childhood games, passed on to younger cousins when I outgrew it, was returned to me. The thrill of owning Happy Landings: A Geography Game (Whitman Publishing, 1962) did not overwhelm me when I received the game as a birthday present when I was 9 or 10.
For me, a geographically challenged child from the word go (my best guess is that the game was given after a particularly abysmal score on the social studies portion of ITBS) playing the game was an exercise in failure. The board was a world map marked with red stars. After drawing a card with commands like “Ride over Mackinac Bridge which connects upper and lower Michigan” or “Climb towering Mt. Everest in northern India,” players placed their marker on the corresponding star. I don’t remember ever getting a star in the right place. And since the map, the cards and the markers are in pristine condition, the game didn’t see a whole lot of play at our house or anywhere else.
But as a kid, one thing about the game intrigued me: I could spend hours gazing at the children on the cover. The boy was okay, mostly because he’s holding the pointer which was cool, but the girl was fascinating. She was the epitome of early 1960s perfection. Note the curly hair, the lovely bow in her hair, the unwrinkled shirtwaist dress with it’s own gigantic bow, the lace on collar, cuffs and waistband, and the wonderfully full skirt. And from the look on her face, you can bet she can answer every Happy Landings question without breaking a sweat. She was everything I aspired to be and couldn’t accomplish, no matter how hard I tried. That’s why I spent hours gazing at her picture, trying to imagine what it would be like to have a dress like hers, curls like hers, and smarts like hers.
I’m thrilled to possess the game again because it brings back so many memories: the chalky, booky, dusty smell of the elementary school I attended, girls wearing shorts under our dresses so the boys wouldn’t see our panties on the jungle gym at recess, the joy of discovering Laura Ingalls, the Bobbsey Twins, and Clara Barton inside the covers of library books, and the disappointment of failing another spelling test because I got “b” and “d” mixed up again.
But mostly, I’m thrilled because the game reminds me of how far I’ve moved beyond the child who once owned it and yet how much of her remains. I no longer obsess over lace, bows, ironed dresses, and curly hair. But, I still mix up “b” and “d” when I’m tired, and I still love meeting characters inside a book.
One last thing that hasn’t changed? I still don’t like playing geography games, so please, buy something else for my birthday this year!
