Ohio Art Company
Etch A Sketch

I am happy; in my hands, I have one of my favorite childhood objects. Having it and fiddling with its dials means taking a time dive to the late seventies when my days were brightened by the magic board Etch A Sketch.

To be honest, I had a lot of other toys like the legendary colorful Lego bricks, the most assorted Playmobil, not to mention the multiple brawny Big Jims (I even owned the 007 with the camper for investigations..), but the memory of this board remained vividly unaltered in me until, shortly before Christmas, I stumbled upon it and didn’t let it slip away.

I had been looking for it, disorderly and without any criteria, here and there among flea markets and toy stores, and in one of these, which had recently opened its doors, I found it stacked on a shelf, intact in its retro charm and so plastic in its soft shapes of an unforgettable red color. What an emotion and how much I wanted to have it again!!.. Maybe I’m going senile? But no, luckily I’m still a child at heart, and just to be sure, I even bought two: one for me and one for my nephews, who were thrilled with the unusual and curious gift, so similar to the small screen of a laptop but able to work without batteries with the simple gesture of the thumb and forefinger of both hands, right and left.

As a child, at the end of the seventies, I had a veneration for this magnificent board containing a magical fine gray sand, and thanks to the combination of the movement of two dials, it was easy to draw vertical and horizontal lines perpendicular to each other and, with a little more skill, curved lines. After completing a drawing, after showing it to parents and friends, a simple shake of the board would make the sand erase the drawing and return the board to its initial blank slate state - non-electric - ready to accept new "incisions."

Over time, my ability to draw with the board has remained unaltered (how much time did I spend on it in my youth to still be so capable today?? How many kilometers of lines traced?? Cavandoli, creator of La Linea, would be proud of me!!..) and the pastime still holds its charm; it also helps to relax me and why not.. Makes me feel like a child again. In short, even thirty years later, still great satisfaction!!

Now it rests on the bookshelf, and there isn't a 35-40-year-old kid who sees it upon entering the house and doesn’t draw something on it.

My board (I like to think of it as the progenitor of technical drawing programs like AutoCAD) is still very modern today and remains an excellent exercise for the mind and to let the imagination run wild, in a world that has lost its imagination in front of.. Umm.. The computer screen (which is exactly what I’m doing now..).

I'm going on a journey, retreating with my board, and I bid you farewell.