Where is Waldo, really?

So where is Waldo, really?

During the summer vacation, I spent about two weeks at my uncle’s house. Frankly speaking, I enjoyed the break. Not only because I was in Seoul without my parents, but also due to the presence of my cousin—a five year old girl. It was quite different you know, to live with a five year old instead of my teenage sister who is almost as tall as me, and perhaps larger in volume. Her name is Jenny and she seemed to like my presence in the household.

So there I was, doing my homework and Jenny comes in with a box of crayons and orders me to draw things with her. Although I was busy, I followed her orders and began to draw a tree on the paper. About halfway through, Jenny looks at my drawing and states that she would like to continue it. Once again, I follow her will and finish up the creature that she was drawing while she continued on the tree that I was drawing. After she finishes her job with the skills of Picasso at age six, she points out that her drawing was far better than mine. By the way, “her drawing” in this case is the tree that I almost finished. The point I’m trying to make is that playing with little children is fun and enjoyable, but at times challenging and perhaps even annoying to a certain point.

The founders of toy companies must have noticed such problems as well. It seems quite evident, since most of the toys produced usually aim for a common goal: to allow the child to play by themselves without pestering their parents. The numbers on the price tags are proportional to the estimate amount of free time that the parents will earn through purchasing the particular product. That is the reason why the Lego is so expensive, but loved at the same time. The parents like the “creativity” and “freedom” advertised by the company. But what grabs their attention more is the enumerable number of pieces that could form into just about anything. Even though most parents love their child and enjoy spending their free time with their spouses, the imagination of some free time drives them into purchasing the Lego for their child. The statistics that show the popularity of the Lego proves that the desire for some private time is a universal experience among parents with young children.

Another toy, or book in this case, that achieves the ultimate goal very successfully is “Find Waldo”. The book contains pictures full of people with similar clothing and asks for the child to find one specific character. I myself confronted the book for the first time at age five, but the question still remains as a mystery of my childhood. Now being a little older and a bit more skeptical, I am quite sure that Waldo does not exist anywhere in the book. That way, the child would fall in an endless struggle to find a non-existent character and fail continuously, earning the parents a lot of private time. Or even if Waldo does exist, I’m confident that the manufacturers have taken time to make sure that he is undetectable by the human eye. If by any chance, he is spotted, there are a lot of pages in that book. So either way, Waldo has served the parents of our generation very well.

If I had to make a choice, I would say that Waldo only exists on the cover. Not because I myself have failed in my youth, but that seems like the practical choice that I would make from the point of view of the designer. Anyhow, the whereabouts or whether Waldo exists is not really the important point to consider. Rather the fact that parents also crave for some free time and that they are willing to spend money on it interests me much more. That is why the book “Find Waldo” exists in almost every household in the U.S. while, ironically, Waldo exists only in our imagination.

**For those of you who disagree with me--Give it a try!