Sandy

Tor.com is revisiting all the Pixar movies in preparation for the upcoming movie, Brave. I read the post on Toy Story earlier today and I came to a somewhat disturbing realization. Even more disturbing is that this realization came in the form of a math equation:

Andy + a bit of Sid = Sandy. I am a Sandy.

Before today, I always considered myself an Andy: someone who cherished her toys. My toys were my friends, and I was three-quarters convinced that they came to life whenever I left my bedroom. In fact, sometimes I would wait outside the door with my ear pressed against the doorknob in hopes that I would catch them talking to each other before they reverted back to their plastic states. I played with Barbies past elementary school; Kimberly and I reluctantly passed on our precious Barbies to Shannan with the solemn instructions to brush Teresa's hair often, to not call Pocahontas "Poke" to her face, to keep Ted away from the beans, and to make sure Mike and Ken didn't lose their legs too often.

But today I saw the truth: even as an innocent little kid, I had a bit of Sid in me. While I took care of my own toys, I frequently tormented Shannan's toys when Shannan wouldn't obey her Great and Noble Babysitter. I stole her dog, Fred, strategically placed him in a clear glass of water, and put him in the freezer so that several hours later, when my dad opened the freezer, in the spotlight was a stuffed dog stuck in a glass of ice, his "circulation" cut off my the ring of ice around his neck. I threw her toys on the roof where she couldn't reach them. I even pretended to take a bite out of Ned's ear at the dinner table. Her reaction was to flail her arms, scream "Noooooooo!" and topple off the piano bench she was sitting on.

Kimberly and I also enjoyed playing bad guys, and 97.4 percent of the time I was the boss and she was my servant. We stuffed our stuffed animals into grocery bags and hung them from the prison bars (a.k.a. monkey bars) outside, we threw Barbies off the roof with parachutes that clearly didn't work, and one day we decided to bury a bunch of our Happy Meal toys in the sandbox--Mom digs up a new one every few years.

One more shameful confession: if I had ever had a rocket like Sid's, I would have at least considered strapping Jed to it so he could fly to the sky and burst into smithereens.

But Sid can't have been that bad of a kid--we all know that he secretly wanted to ride the pony, and he didn't turn into a serial killer later in life. His just enjoyed tormenting his little sister, which is what little sisters are for, right?

Despite my dark past, I still consider myself more Andy than Sid. Why? Because I cried at the end of Toy Story 3, not because Andy went off to college, but because he left his toys behind.