Little Red Wagon Day 2022

Around 1992 — back in my oldie but goodie VHS tape days — I saw a rather disturbing movie called Radio Flyer.

It starred Lorraine Bracco, John Heard, Adam Baldwin, Elijah Wood, and Joseph Mazzello and was about the reminiscing of a father regarding his own childhood.

He and his sibling relocated to a new town with their cannine after the remarriage of their mother to a rather brutal stepfather who subjects the younger brother to physical abuse.

There is an element of fantasy involving the older brother who converts their toy wagon called Radio Flyer into a plane to fly the abused child to safety.

When I was a kid I had a little red wagon. I think it's a right of passage. I had it long enough for the paint to fade and accumulate various dings along the way. I would go hither thither and yon from time to time pulling my youngest brother around the block in it which he seemed to enjoy immensely.

"I'm going to fix your little red wagon" was something I sometimes heard in warning regarding the various trangressions children invariably make and I don't recall any serious consequences of that somewhat milder threat I've known over the years.

The last Wednesday in March is Little Red Wagon Day.

It honors the little red wagon of childhood legend and lore.

That "fixing" of your little red wagon was an admonition from my early childhood and nowadays celebrates those wheels upon which children everywhere likely have taken off on adventures.

Little red wagons are the hallmark of burgeoning freedom and adventure as the result of wheels acquired in childhood.

It is an element of my childhood that made it all special.