A Time Machine in a Jar

By far the best birthday present I got this year was a jar of Smurfs.

Yes, Smurfs. Those blue shirtless guys with the funny hats.

On the morning of my birthday after being presented with loads of cards all filled with money, after downloading the $50 Amazon gift voucher from my mum all the way in South Africa (spent on Goo Goo Dolls, The Fray and Madonna (for the wife) CDs), I opened the badly wrapped present complete with (rather random) piece of string.

At first I thought it was a jar of sweets or chocolates, which would have kept me in a movie’s worth of munchies and kept my dentist flush with future filling bills, until I realised that they were the exact same plastic Smurf figures Greg and I used to get at the petrol station. My niece had had them lying around and on the night before thought she’d wrap them up for me just because.

My eyes lit up and my jaw dropped open. Everyone in the room – even the kids – initially thought I was taking the piss.

I wasn’t.

When I was but a wee lad my mum, dad, brother and I used to spend almost every school holiday on my grandparents farm in Beaufort West – one of those small towns described as ‘one horse’ but also only have one policeman, one prostitute and about thirty liquor stores. It is surrounded by many large farms, so in fact it has many horses.

Anyway, the drive from Cape Town to Beaufort West would take around six or seven hours (this was before the Huguenot Tunnel shortened the journey considerably) and on the requisite stops for petrol, padkos and a piss we would receive a Smurf figurine.

I’m not entirely sure if my parents bought them or they came free with every tank filled (it was before I understood the concept of money… as in something other people always seem to have and I always seem to need), but we always got some.

That was around 1985, and now back in 2012 it was as though someone tied my brain to a football and I’d been booted back in time by Beckham.

Of course, the kids were chuffed by my reaction, even though they didn’t entirely understand it. It seemed kind of poetic to be surprised with a burst on nostalgia on my birthday.