Let's Twist Again

At some point, I told my 6-year-old son that all of my cool stuff would be his one day. But since I didn't specify that "one day" would be when I was dead, he took it upon himself to decide that it means when he turns 7. And so I prepare to say goodbye to my old baseball cards and comic books (and, most likely, sayonara to their resale value).

I suppose I should be happy that there are at least some things I enjoyed as a kid that he's eager to have. Generation X parents like me constantly struggle to convince our children that the toys, books, and movies we enjoyed when we were their age are still cool today.

Sometimes it works: My kids have embraced the Peanuts gang and Rock'em Sock'em Robots, for example. On the other hand, hard as I've tried, I can't get them into "The Electric Company." The 1970's pace and lingo just don't translate.

But I've also learned that you don't have to force it. Recently, my son happened upon my old Rubik's Snake on a bookshelf and was immediately fascinated by the toy. For those of you who may not remember, the Snake was one of Erno Rubik's follow-ups to his amazing Rubik's Cube.

It's made up of 24 connected triangles, which can be twisted into shapes from a ball to a terrier to a rooster. Not a puzzle with a single solution like the Cube, the Snake, (now marketed as Rubik's Twist) is just a fun, straightforward toy — which can also probably boost a child's spatial and motor skills, not to mention keep him occupied for hours (well, maybe one hour).

However, since the joints in the 25-year-old Snake my son discovered had already begun to corrode, I went online and ordered a new one for him. Now he's working his way up to the terrier, while his 4-year-old sister proudly manipulates the Twist into a set of stairs. Maybe the '80s were more timeless than we all thought.