2002-08-14 - 12:47 p.m.

Snips, Snails, and Puppy Dog Tails

So what is it like to be a boy (not a guy, a boy). Well, sometimes being an adult makes me forget, but the basic little builder / destroyer personality is always there. Among the many reasons I�m engineer should be added, I�m really just a little boy at heart.

Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars were so cool as a kid, not because I ever had any desire to grow up and be a racecar driver (though I did go through a fireman phase when I was around 4 years old). Playing with toy cars (or trains) isn�t about the vehicles themselves.

It is all about moving something through an imaginary play space. As a kid I would get boxes, grocery bags, and blocks and build towns for my cars to race through. I�d also build an airport. Why? The airport was the source of planes, and planes were the source of disasters. My toy planes were constantly crashing through my block buildings or literally punching holes through my paper bag high rise towers.

As a kid this didn�t bother. It still doesn�t today, but nearly a year later I am afraid some people might think it is disturbed for little boys to do this. What they don�t think about is what else I would do �

I would sometimes play the role of X-1. X-1 was a giant super robot that would chase after the toy cars, swat down toy planes, and kick and crumple up the paper bag high rises or just scatter the smaller block buildings. How real is that? A giant stomping through and destroying a city?

Rebuilding Time

OK, some people still find even that disturbing. But what they didn�t realize is that I had one emergency vehicle (be it police car, fire truck, or ambulance) for every normal vehicle. I just loved destroying a town so my "good guys" could swarm out, drive off the X-1 robot, and then make way for my construction vehicles to come back out again and start over.

Yeah. There was a cycle. And this imaginary cycle was designed so that every car could do its thing. As an adult I do stop and think about the fact that nearly every night when I hear the fire trucks roar out of the fire station down the street from me, that somebody in Davis either has a medical problem or their home is on fire. But to the little boy it is more of a "Hey, see that truck does too have a use!"

LISTENING TO: Wumpscut Deadmaker

-=-

<< previous - next >>