Childhood is an unforgettable

• As a child, I wrote my last will. All my toys were to go to our cat: my room – to Alex, the local hobo who always said "hi" to me; my etiquette textbook was to go to my brother, as we'd had a fight not long before. I brought the list to my aunt, who was a lawyer, and asked her to "apostle" it. She was a resourceful woman, so she sent copies of my list to all our relatives, crowning it all by putting the original on her desk in a frame. That way, not only my family laughed at me but all her clients did too.
• Once, a boy from my class approached me during naptime in kindergarten. I pretended to be asleep and didn't move. He lay beside me, kissed me on the cheek, and quietly said, "I love you." Then he went to his bed. I still remember him going home that day, his gray striped sweatshirt... Now I'm 27, but that childhood confession remains one of the most romantic things I've heard in my life.
• When I went to my grandfather's home outside the town, everyone there had a "Beware of the dog" sign on their gates. I once got angry with Grandpa for some reason, and while he was at work, I wrote "Beware of Gramps" on his gate.
• A girl once brought a new doll to kindergarten, and it was so pretty even the boys liked it. Everyone played with it, but I was the one to break it. The girl cried, of course, so I decided to give her a similar doll. I asked my parents to buy it for me for my birthday instead of the thing I wanted for myself. They approved, and I gave her that doll on my birthday. The girl's joy was the best pay-off I could imagine. And at dinner, my dad gave me my own present as well. He said I did the right thing, and they were proud of me.
• When I was 3, my grandma and I went to the grocery store. There was a line of a few people. One of the women there said to my grandma, "What a beautiful daughter you have!" Without too much thinking, I pulled down both my shorts and my underpants and said, "I'm a grandson!"
• When I was 8, I remember our cat giving birth to a litter. After the winter holidays, when I couldn't get up from bed in the morning, my mom caught all the kittens and let them loose in my bed. They crawled all over me, and I just had to get up to let them down on the floor. One of the warmest memories from my childhood.
• When my brother was little, we lived in a country house, and he often went in the backyard to get suntanned. He took a folding bed, undressed to his shorts, lay down, and covered himself with a blanket. When our mom told him that wasn't how you tanned, he replied, "If I take it off, mosquitoes will bite me!"
• My friend and I live in the same apartment building on the same floor, but we're two entrances away from each other. When we were little, we didn't have cell phones, so we decided to make our own "mail" by pulling a rope from her balcony to mine. It wasn't too easy, we lived on the second floor after all, but we somehow managed. It turned out to be real fun: you attached a note to the end of one rope, pulled the other, and your note started traveling. We were so happy we could send these "mails" to each other every evening. In the morning, the one to wake up first was to send the first note. I remember getting up and rushing to the balcony where there was already a note waiting saying "Good morning!" I miss those times so much.
• When I was little, I often played in the sandbox with my friend. She once told me a story about how she'd been digging the sand and had dug so deep she could see the subway and the trains. I believed her and started digging myself, sitting there until late, when my parents took me away. I was so frustrated when they told me there was no subway in our town!
• Taking a shower as a kid, I liked filling my mouth with water and pretending I was a fountain by spitting it out. I even assumed different "fountain" poses. Some dreamed of becoming doctors, others of flying into space, and I dreamed of becoming a fountain.
• When I was 3, my parents painted the floor. I didn't notice, and I ran across it, leaving my footprints in the paint. Now I'm 21. Recently, when moving the sofa, I saw those same prints. It turned out my parents hadn't painted them over specifically for me to see them when I grew up.

->my high school story

The year the original Toy Story came out in theaters, I graduated high school. Toy Story 2 came out in 1999, the year that I got married. But it wasn’t until 2004 that I actually saw either movie for the first time, about a year after my son was born. For many people Toy Story 3 represents a cycle of their own childhood coming full circle; for me it represents my children. My house has been full of Buzz Lightyear and Woody toys for as long as I’ve been a parent.

We went to Disneyland not long after my daughter was born. Meeting Buzz and Woody topped the list of things we had to do while there. And it was the highlight of our entire week at Disneyland.

So clearly when the first commercials starting running for Toy Story 3, all of us were ecstatic. And then much to our surprise at the last family fun night of the school year we (along with 100 others) were the lucky recipients of three tickets to a private screening of Toy Story 3 the morning it opened.

The kids (and myself) counted down the days to June 18 until it finally came. And we met a large group of friends from school and watched Toy Story 3 — our first time ever watching Buzz, Woody, Jessie and the gang on the big screen and it was well worth the wait.

I have to admit that with my daughter starting kindergarten in the fall and my son becoming a second grader, I’ve been a tad emotional lately. It’s hard when your babies aren’t babies anymore. And I knew in the first two minutes of Toy Story 3 that I should’ve packed tissues in my purse.

The movie opens with home movie footage of Andy, as we remember him. Then we see that he’s grown up and soon leaving for college. A quick glance around the theater at the moms dabbing their eyes made me realize that I was not the only one seeing my own children in the grown up Andy.

Woody and the gang are torn between being stored in the attic or donated. And of course, the movie stays true to the Toy Story formula as the toys end up somewhere they don’t belong and are forced to find their way home.

But home isn’t exactly where we expect, hence what you may have heard about the absolute sobbing heard in theaters during the closing scenes of the movie. And it was during those closing scenes that it dawned on me why I love the Toy Story movies just as much as my kids do.

Because all of us where children once. We all had our own little imaginary worlds that we built with the toys that we shared our lives with. And all us reach a point where we outgrow not just the toys, but also the part of us that believes that we can do anything — that we can make something out of anything. Somehow with age, it gets harder and harder to play, to live, and to just be.

As I watched Toy Story 3 with my own two children, I thought of my own beloved toys from when I was a kid. Through my tears I looked down to my left and saw my son sat watching with Woody sitting in his lap. Then I turned to my right where Jessie was laying in my daughter’s arms.

And what I realized is that while we lose the innocence of childhood, as we grow older and the magic world of toys disappears, we do get them back. As parents we get all that magic back. We get to build forts, play Star Wars, dress up and look for magic in every ordinary rock we find on the street.

It’s the great secret of becoming a parent. It’s the thing no one explains to you before you become a parent. The greatest gift your children give you is your own childhood back. Enough of it to understand the beauty of a movie like Toy Story anyway.