Tiny Rubber Basketball

Day One: Tiny Rubber Basketball and Other Tiny Disused Toys

Our house is permeated with tiny toys, accumulated by my children over the past 17 years. The tiny rubber basketball has been at the bottom of the mail basket on the credenza in the living room for months, possibly years. It is foam core with a hard plastic surface, pocked and dirty, about an inch and half in diameter.

A number of other tiny toys became visible once I noticed the tiny basketball. A tiny skateboard with working wheels and a sandpaper surface. A tiny green wooden railroad car with magnetic ends. A tiny hard rubber ball with a plastic penguin encased inside. A tiny wire man with missing arms and a plastic helmet. A tiny magnifying glass. A tiny purple fabric flower with a tiny purple jewel in the center. A brown plastic cockroach, life-sized.

I toss all these items into a reused Ziploc bag, ready for a PTO Thrift Shop donation run. My teenagers won't miss them.

I often imagine the Chinese workers who manufacture these toys. Do they feel proud of their work, or indifferent? Are they grateful for a steady paycheck, or do they make next to nothing? Are they children, or old, or neither? Do they work long hours? Are the factories loud and airless, or do they have windows that open? Do they occasionally slip a McDonald's Happy Meal prize in their pockets?

And who extracts the natural resources that are the basis of these toys? Texas oil refiners? Migrant farm workers? Brazilian rubber renderers?

What is plastic made out of anyway?