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This wall looks DISGUSTING! In a good way (I think?) I took this photo in the men’s room of a rather dilapidated Toys R’ Us. I didn’t capture any photos of the bathroom stalls, but they were painted this really nasty rotting seafoam green that just didn’t compliment anything in the room at all. And the floor tiles also had this gross yellowing on them that brought me back into a VHS-era local community centre. Outside the washrooms, shelves full of toys towered over us, and they built barriers around us aisle after aisle, forming a kind of labyrinthine backrooms-type warehouse. surprisingly full with new and current toys, but besides myself and my girlfriend, there weren’t really a whole lot of other customers there. This place has seen certainly better days.

My girlfriend and I were on a date, walking along Broadway Street, just going wherever the heck that seemed the most interesting to us, and we happened upon this Toys’ R Us store that was still operational somehow.

It was a little bit of a bittersweet experience. The toys were actually… new, some made by companies I’ve seen before, and others made by new names that I’d never seen back when I used to get Lego for Christmas (from Santa of course!). All these manufacturers are still making big and little things for children to play with, but it just felt like no one was there to play with them anymore. In fact, most of the people I saw in there were also like Jasmine and I—adults. Were we all there just to reminisce? To relive a moment that’s escaped, far back into the past?

I don’t know. I want to be cautious of going all boomer mode and being like “Arghh! These kids nowadays don’t know true entertainment, we used to play with plastic toys and now they all just be doomscrolling Tik-Tok!!!” Putting smartphones into everyone’s hands has certainly brought about its fair share of benefits. I can meet new friends online, catch up with global affairs, and do all sorts of other stuff I wouldn’t be able to do sequestered in one small geographic community.

But standing between the tall shelves of toys, looking at the boxes featuring pictures of children smiling with glee, I really do feel a sense of sadness. It’s a sadness that we’ve forgotten some essential joy in our lives, one that defines what it means to live at all.