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The third row of the station wagon faced the rear window. You watched the road you had already driven. If a trucker was behind you, you pumped your arm and hoped for the horn.

A two-pocket folder with prongs, printed with airbrushed unicorns and rainbow leopards, that cost $1.29 at Target and sorted a fourth-grade classroom into a hierarchy nobody had voted on.

A little bottle with a stiff brush. A layer of white paint over the mistake. A full minute of blowing on the page to make it dry. Then you wrote over it and the pen caught on the ridge.

A hot pink plastic telephone the size of a Kleenex box. Twenty-four cartoon boys. One of them had a crush on you. The phone would tell you which one, in a voice that sounded like a man reading a hostage note.

A hundred preset sounds, one two-inch speaker, and a preset named HUMAN VOICE that sounded like a choir being held under a bathtub. Casio, a public company with an engineering department, shipped this. Your aunt bought it. Nobody had a meeting about it.

A single-serving snack that was thirty-six inches long, rolled up inside a white plastic pouch, printed with a smiley face you were supposed to press to the roof of your mouth. General Mills sold this. Your mom bought it. Nobody thought this was weird.