The Breyer

I brought my lunch to work today...and ate it before my lunch hour. I still wanted to use my lunch hour so I decided to spend it shopping. It was really relaxing to spend an hour browsing racks and looking at nothing in particular. I didn't know how much money I had in my checking account so I didn't want to buy anything.

And then I saw it. On clearance.

It was a set of Breyer horses comprising of Seabiscuit and whatever horse he ran against. I don't have a thing for Seabiscuit. I don't have a thing for War Monger, or whatever the opposing horse's name was. But when I was little, I LOVED Breyer horses.

Being $20-70 a piece, they were too expensive for me to have a collection of them. I think I have 2. 3 at the most. I tried telling my parents that they were collectibles (which they are) and some are worth a lot of money (which is true,) but this was not enough to convince my mother with her single parent teacher's salary that I should have them. I did get my dad to buy me one, once. I think I had to save for the other one. One Christmas my dad even bought me this couple hundred dollar horse barn to house my Breyers, but alas, they never came.

So here is this set sitting on the shelf. War Monger's ears are chipped, which is why it's on clearance. I held the bright yellow box and deliberated whether a 24-year-old should still buy toys, whether the horse with the chipped ears is worth it, and remembered the empty barn in my closet at my mother's house.

I almost ran to the check out with plastic in hand.

My mother is meeting me at work on Friday morning to pick up Nikita for the weekend because I'm going to spend July 4th with Baby's family. When she's loading up the dog, I'm going to hand her the bag with the bright yellow box and ask her to put it in my closet. I know she's going to roll her eyes and moan at me, giving me some lecture about being a pack rat, or buying small things when I should be saving my money for something big. Or both.

You can bet your money that the next time I'm at the house and have a few hours to kill, I'm going to open that box, set up my barn, and give those horses a home.