Items from My Youth: Tiny Helmets
“Slow news day.”
Along with my Starting Lineup figurines, I also salvaged these mini helmets from my mother’s latest rummage pile.
Taking advantage of my GF’s clean desk.
I used to get these for a quarter a piece from vending machines at grocery stores.
Once I had enough of them, I would play out entire seasons, the schedules scratched out in notebooks, each game decided by a coin flip. (I was never able to get all of the teams, so I just used duplicates to stand in for the missing teams, putting a tiny scrap of masking tape over the logo on the duplicate and initialing the tape to represent the missing team.) For the playoffs, I would do a coin flip per inning and keep track of the “score.” I sorta wish I still had those notebooks now. It was a life’s work, really.
In an effort to meld the past and the present, I decided to assign each of the helmets to an object/being in my current house. I made some effort to align some aspect of the team with the object/being it got placed with — but don’t read too much into that. Or do. There are some duplicates.
California Angels, LOLz
Braves helmet cereal bowl that I got from Apple Jacks box offer,
had since I was 10 or so.
Lady stuff.
Wanted to have chicken and beer but beer was too high quality
and chicken was frozen.
Look at me: I’m beautiful.
I’m not kidding: I named our cat Mark “Bird” Fidrych.
I can has mini helmet?
Some good finds for Kenny Williams.
A family of sasquatches, a family of extraterrestrials; $5, Seven Mile Fair
It’s a fossil. Get it?
Possibly my fav’.
Courage bird.
This cat once lived with a dog named Brewer.
Many of those pictures are really great. The Cubs and A’s submissions were particular highlights. Those, and every one with a cat.
These are pretty cool. The Cubs one was classic.
Would someone explain the Phillies (battery) and Orioles (lamps) pictures?
Look up JD Drew and batteries and you’ll find the Phillies association.
The O’s one is just random. But I like the O’s, so I wanted to include it.
Man, these are so awesome, thanks for sharing.
I didn’t have these in my childhood, but we had the plastic ones that were a bit bigger that you’d get at Baskin Robbins with a sundae. They’d put your ice cream in them, and then they’d become a sticky mess, which my parents were thrilled about.
Anyone with me? I was obsessed! After awhile I’d go and I would ask them which helmets they had and if they didn’t have one that I needed I wouldn’t even get ice cream. Still have them in my old childhood room…
Likewise…however I collected the mini-helmets of ice cream gooey-ness (and greatness!) at AA Barons games.
Some of these were excellent! I’m not a cat fan (though I am a Tigers & Lions fan oddly enough), but I can has mini helmet cracked me the f up.
Ok. That was hilarious
This is a very deep and disturbing window into your soul.
And hilarious. It’s that too.
I had a shit-ton of these as a kid, along with a cardboard display thingy. Now I want to get on a plane, break into my parents’ house and take what’s mine.
I have these same helmets in my office at home… It’s cool that other people still have theirs…
So good