Wishing

 You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. 

I want Three Wishes Toy Store. The crowded aisles stuffed and overflowing with things that I could only imagine having in my toy box. GI Joes. Hot Wheels. Models of tanks and planes and warships. This was the destination my brothers and I patiently awaited when it was time to head down to Crossroads Mall to buy school clothes. This was the scene of my ugly reality check when, as a child, I was taken there by my grandmother and told I could get "anything I wanted." I was alternatively admonished by my mother before I went that my grandmother was "not made of money." 

Alas, those Three Wishes were of limited duration, and it was bulldozed along with the rest of Crossroads Mall so that they could erect a very similar structure with a number of different chain stores with the inspired name of 29th Street. Only this new mall would allow you to walk outside from store to store. 

Pretty ingenious. 

Do that dream died. It was eventually replaced by Toys R Us, a warehouse-sized compendium of all things toy. It was at one time a litmus test for friends of ours. If you could hang for an hour or two walking the aisles of Toys R Us with us, you were worthy. As my son grew to relative maturity, we would often take a side trip to what had become "his" toy store just to look. "Need it. Got it. Need it. Got it." 

Then, about a decade ago, Toys R Us closed all of its retail stores and filed for bankruptcy. They could not compete with online sales. But that meant there was no place to go to test drive, to fondle, to covet. It wasn't the same thing. 

But now, the clouds are parting. With a new partner Toys R Us is opening one hundred twenty stores again, just in time for the holidays. 

Wait. "Just in time for the holidays?"

That means that these are essentially "pop-up" stores, with the focus on milking as many dollars from a toy-starved populace as possible before returning to its prior existence as a Bev-Mo. 

It's really hard to keep your inner child nourished in this world.