If at certain of the year's festive seasons, you find yourself wishing you were a kid again, forget it. You're probably not smart enough. Qualifications for membership in the ranks of the under-12-year-olds, in whose honor the larger emporiums are currently running pandemoniums called toy departments, are high; and aspirants had better have a good understanding of pantographs, sismographs, spinthariscopes, the electrolysis of nickel compounds, the 12-tone scale, and most of the wizardry of modern electronics--to mention only a few points. This is all sine qua non equipment and enables you to perform the elementary tasks of childhood, such as forging checks, bombing out enemy areas, leading scorched-earth campaigns, and locating uranium deposits in the back yard.

Most of the stores, of course are still making moderate concessions to the gentler fraction of the species, Jordan Marsh devoted half a wall to the dolls (there are many imported French models this year) and their accessories. A large supply of diapers indispensable to any modern doll is modestly hidden from view. F. O. A. Schwartz is offering a house for any doll that can afford $500 for a place to live. The house seems to be fully equipped, including what look like outlets for electric razors, although there were no dolls shaving during my visit.

Toy transportation facilities this year are as modern as the new store front on Jordan Marsh. That store undoubtedly has the best train exhibit in town, although it doesn't touch F. O. A. Schwarz on the "toy" cars. These 1951 models may actually be toys, but it seemed to me that anyone under nine years old in the way of one of these speeding machines would be running a grave risk of suicide. A sleck, black, compressed air racer, which was also available last year, is capable of enormous speeds and gets up to 75 miles per gallon of air.

The trains remain the same; but this year's line of new accessories is disappointing. The best of the new developments is a cattle car that, at the press of a button, opens its doors and ejects a load of steers into a waiting corral.

But the main themes of the toys this year are science and war. Keeping up with the year's changes in the nuclear laboratories, the new Atomic Energy Labs, selling at $49.50, are now equipped with deionizers, Dri-electric power packs, and Geiger Counters. Thousands of smiling pink-checked celebrants on the 25th are being exhorted to test the radioactivity of ore samples, measure half-lives, view the alpha particle effect on fluorescent screens, and prospect for radio-active deposits on the way to school. Parents are assured that success in this venture may lead to a $10,000 reward, that very similar Geiger Counters cost many hundreds of dollars, and that the "toy" is as harmless as a new puppy.

The Erector series has a new model with 35 lbs. of parts and a price tag of $50,000 which can, with encouragement, be coaxed into a walking giant who is ordinarily cheerfully disposed.

The Gilbert Corporation is the leader in this field. Their engineers are apparently inside men in the Pentagon and Oak Ridge, who are lifting the latest trade secrets. This whole program of advancing scientific orientation of the little tots is a kind of junior universal military training to prepare them for the coming, grim years.

One young boy I overheard the other day was explaining to his mother about a blackboard set he had his heart set on. The sales lady treated his arguments with a certain scorn and pointed out that blackboards, after all, were made for little children; was he sure that a nice photo-electric cell, or potentiometer wouldn't be better?

Within a couple of years, the children of the world are bound to look like figments of Charles Adams' imagination.