wounds of youth

Flim has a long and interesting post about collectibles, and how every little dent and fleck of paint on old beloved toys are badges of your childhood.

It's true.

Once in a while, a revival of toys or cartoons past brings back a surge of memories, and I go out and try to purchase a bit of my personal history.

It may not make sense to other people, but when I get an old Lego set in a garage sale, I swoon with ill-repressed delight.

I remember playing with my sets, constructing things beyond the models provided and creating new structures - and then making up stories about it. I loved the castle set series because of my leaning towards fantasy. I remember vowing, just a couple of years ago, to begin collecting Lego again, since my finances were in a whole different level compared to when I was a child. So to Nikki's amusement, I bought several of the large sets.

But it wasn't the same. It wasn't that the sets I really wanted were no longer available and that I had to make do with was on the shelves of Toys r Us, but rather the sad epiphany that I couldn't go back, not completely, and reclaim to absolute magic of my youth.

The pieces still held the potential to become battlements, spires and portcullises, but somehow I had lost the original blueprint of the ur-Castle of my previous imagination, and could only see things as an adult.

Realizing that, I put away the new sets I got and picked up a novel to read instead.

But of course deep down inside, I'm playing with my Lego, creating scenarios of war, romance and heroism.