Daily Dose of English 31
Desk Toys
Daily Dose of English 31
Intermediate
Hey, everyone. My name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about desk toys. Toys that you keep on your desk. But first, I want to say a little hello. I feel like I don't do this very often, but I think it's nice to say, hi, how are you? I know that I can't hear your response, but I hope that you take a few moments to think about how you are today and tell yourself that you're great, that you're a cool person and that I appreciate you being here and that I'm happy that you're continuing to learn English so regularly every single day. So maybe give yourself a little pat on the back, take a deep breath, because we're going to talk about desk toys. Desk toys are usually little things, little toys that you keep on your desk to often keep yourself occupied or also just to fill space. They're both common and also not that common at the same time. Whenever people think of a desk that's in an office or even just somewhere, I think that they're thought of as having stuff on them. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe other people don't think of desks as having little gadgets or knickknacks. Those are other words to describe a little toy. But that's how I think of desks, honestly, especially in movies, right? You will see something on the boss's desk, whether it's like a Newton's cradle, which is that's the one, the little It's like a cube-ish thing and there's a bunch of balls hanging from strings and like you take one end and you let it go and it goes back and forth. That's a Newton's cradle. That's a classic desk toy that you can see in lots of different places and it shows some properties of physics very interestingly. But I want to talk a bit about my desk toys and other kinds of toys like that that I've had. Because I tend to fidget with things. That means I like to have stuff in my hands and do something with that thing when I'm working or in a meeting or whatever. Actually, if I don't have a good fidget toy, it can get kind of annoying because if I will like play with a pen, for example, I don't have one of those pens on my desk right now. Oh, actually, yes, I do. Hang on. Okay. So there's these pens that have the, oh no, dang it. I don't. Do I? No, I don't. Shoot. Well, you know those pens that on the end, they go chk, chk, chk, chk, like to open the end of the pen? I often write with those. I don't know why I don't have any right now, but if I'm playing with those, it's pretty noisy, obviously. And I've actually made some people, not upset, but they get very frustrated with my clicking. And so at one point I had a friend, I was in a class with her and I sat next to her. And at one point she's like, I'm going to buy you a little fidget toy because that is so annoying. And so she found a little fidget desk toy online and got it for me so that I would be quiet. Because I don't think about it. I don't do it on purpose. It's just something that I end up doing when I'm recording a podcast or whatever it might be. And so you might also hear some fidgeting going on in some of these episodes because sometimes I can't help it, especially if I have a pen close to me. You might hear that I'm playing with a pen right now to, I don't know, keep my hands occupied in some way. Like I said, I don't really have any desk toys currently, but I use certain things as desk toys or as fidget toys. For example, a pen. I like a nice weighted pen to just play with. I don't know, it's fun. I actually tend to like the pens that work with tablets. So not real ink pens, but I guess digital pens maybe you can call them. For example, in the series of English with Comics, I use a digital pen to write on my tablet. And that one's great for fidgeting with because I can spin it around my thumb and it's very satisfying. I also have a stone heart that was a gift from my mother because she likes to collect stone hearts. And I have a stone heart on my desk that I occasionally play with. I'm holding it right now. It's not a great fidget toy because it's mostly just like I move it around, but it's got some nice weight to it. It's kind of heavy. And so I do like to move it around, play with it sometimes, especially if I want to like kind of have something larger in my hand, because all of the other things on my desk are a little bit smaller. Another great fidget toy that I use all the time is actually this stack of debit or credit cards that I have on my desk. Because over the years I've collected a bunch of cards, but I don't keep them in my wallet because they're not super useful. And so occasionally I'll just play with them because I leave them on my desk. some credit cards and debit cards, whatever it is for various accounts or things. And so you might hear me playing with them right now because they're a little nice stack and it's sort of satisfying because they're heavier and thicker than like playing cards. But playing cards are one that I also really like. I used to have a deck of playing cards on my desk that I would fiddle with all the time, but I played with it so much that they got really dirty. The cards got really used and dirty, and it was just not very much fun to play with anymore, and so I left those. Another great fidget toy on my desk is this a removable storage device, this USB drive, which is what you can plug into your computer to put files on, right? They're simple USB devices, but this one is very clicky, right? You can probably hear it, right? It's so clicky. Cause it like comes out of its little shell. And so it's really satisfying to play with. It's sort of like the pen, like I mentioned earlier, the ones that have the clicky open and close like this, right? Kind of annoying if you hear it over and over again, but it's a great fidget toy for me, so I don't mind. And the other one that I've actually mentioned before is my ChapStick. Just a couple of days ago, I recorded an episode on ChapStick, and that's probably my most used fidget toy is my ChapStick. Or no, pen actually definitely is more used, but second most used is the ChapStick because it's a great size just to move around in my hand and play with. And so in general, I think that fidget toys are underused. I think a lot of people aren't okay with having fidget toys, because they're seen as something that's almost more childlike, even though they're really useful for having something to do when you're focusing or when you're busy, because sometimes you are going to move your body or just touch random things. And so having a nice fidget toy is very useful. I actually would like to buy real fidget toys at some point. I just haven't because I think there's fidget toys that can be a little more useful for whatever reason, whether if it's like something to train grip strength or just something a little bit nicer than a removable storage device, a chapstick, and a pen. I think I can do better than that by thinking a little bit about what I want my fidget toy to be. I also think there's a lot of people in the world who need a good fidget toy. They don't sit still super well, which is totally fine. I also can agree with that. But they don't necessarily feel like they're allowed to or have a fidget toy because for whatever reason, if they're working in an office or if it's too noisy or if it just feels, like I said, sort of childlike. But there's nothing wrong with having a good fidget toy. They're very useful and they can be quite fun. especially for people that have like sort of more hyperactive disorders or like the sitting still is even harder because it's a lot more likely that that problem will manifest itself or show itself in some other way. For example, when somebody really bounces their leg a lot, right? And if they're on a call or something, it can come to the microphone, right? And so there's ways that these alternates to fidget toys can cause little problems that might become bigger ones. And so I definitely recommend that people use fidget toys because they're a lot less intrusive than some things like, for example, clicking a pen very annoyingly. And so that's something that I definitely learned. It can also be helpful when you're studying language because you might not understand every single little thing that I'm saying and that can be frustrating, right? And you can want to do something. I know that when I'm learning Czech, often my mind will wander and it will go to something else and I'll stop focusing on the Czech, but that's not good. You want to be able to focus on the language because that's when you actually learn it. Sure, you might not understand every single word or thing that I say, but that's okay. And so having a fidget toy can actually be a helpful tool for focus because it gives you something very, very simple to do, right? If you're just playing with a chapstick, all you're doing is playing with that chapstick. And so it can maybe help you to focus a little bit better on the language, because instead of thinking about, oh, what am I going to make for dinner? I'm really hungry right now. Oh, you can actually just focus on your hands and then come back to the language as quickly as possible. And so, yeah, that's my talking about fidget toys. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I've got nothing else to add other than the fact that I really hope to see you again tomorrow for the next episode of The Daily Dose of English with me, with Ben. All right. I'll see you then. Bye.
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