Ah, Tim. Timmy. You sexy piece of plastic and rubber. You were my desire, my need, my oasis in the desert, my ambrosia, the sparkle in my eyes, the spring in my step, the key to my heart’s contentedness.

Okay, not really. You were just that cheap hunk of plastic that they used to bribe us stupid kids into participating in all those awful school fundraisers.

There’s a flashback right there. Remember school fundraisers? How craptacular were they? My name’s not Willie Loman and I don’t have a case of Fuller brushes, so why on earth would I need to go banging on people’s doors in the middle of winter, trying to persuade them into buying a sausage log or those horrifyingly chalky chocolate bars from me so my school could repave their parking lot? Plus, I can’t believe that schools would actively encourage us to go up to strangers’ houses like that. Talk about the ultimate in pedophilia delivery service.

Memory shiver.

I guess they don’t really do that anymore, though. I know that schools still have fundraisers, but I can’t ever recall having a kid come to my door, trying to sell me something. No, now they leave it up to their parents to bring their sales brochures and forms to work to guilt unsuspecting coworkers into buying a roll of Sally Foster wrapping paper or a Yankee candle. Or two. Okay, maybe three…but I’m not buying anything else, dammit!

So where does Tim the Flying Bird fit into this scenario? Well, every year, the same representative from the same organization would come to our school. Our teachers would usher us into the church auditorium, where we would file into our respective pews, all grades from 1st through 12th (the wee little kids in nursery and kindergarten were spared the marketing indoctrination). And for the next hour, the representative would go through all variety of insane machinations in an attempt to fire us up about the prospect of yet again freezing our asses off for another fundraiser.

Part of every schlocky spiel was Tim the Flying Bird. The representative would start talking to us about how awesome it would be if we all could meet a certain sales quota…say 50 sausage logs or 100 cheese crocks shaped like cows wearing hats (no, I’m not making these items up; yes, they are as disgusting as they sound). And if we met our quota, we’d get something awesome. Something extraordinary. Something miraculous.

We’d get Tim!

Honestly, I wonder if anyone else out there recognizes this thing. When I did a Google search for pictures, this was the only one I could find that looked like what I remember as Tim the Flying Bird. He came in two color schemes: this blue and white one and a yellow bird body with brown, red, and yellow wings. The wings had little spokes that fit into the bird body in a rather flimsy way. And there was a rubber band on the inside of the body that you’d wind using the crank on Tim’s bum.

The whole time the sales rep would be psyching us up verbally about the quotas, he’d be on the dais, winding away on Tim’s crank. And then he’d release the bird. Away Tim would soar, flapping all around the chapel, carried by his cheap diaphanous wings and the sugar-coated shouts and trills of hundreds of kids in excitement overdrive.

Can you imagine? A chapel full of kids, all worked up into a frothy frenzy over this? Talk about a good sales pitch. We’d march out into our respective neighborhoods, hellbent on meeting our quotas so that we, too, could experience the sheer joy of owning our very own Tim.

I must have owned at least five of these silly things, if I owned one. I remember standing on our back porch, winding Tim’s crank and releasing him into the yard. He’d flap and flutter for however long the rubber band could keep him aloft…and then crash to the ground with a crinkly thunk. After a while, one of two things would happen: The rubber band inside would break, or he’d land on something that would puncture one of his wings. And that would be the end of Tim’s flying days.

Funny the flotsam that I retain from my childhood. Some days I can’t even remember the password to my online time sheet, but I can still remember Tim. He was silly, he was cheap, he would be ridiculed and mocked by today’s computer-savvy kinder. But he was fun for a while. I kind of wish I still had a Tim. I bet he’d be really fun at staff meetings.