Lego or Meccanno? Trains or Planes?

I wrote about Boys and their Toys fairly recently.  We love our toys.  And we’re in the enviable positions where we can continue to play with them...

FOREVER!

But when it comes to these specific options, the answer comes swiftly, easily, and without hesitation.

Lego.  A millions times Lego. I’m quite sure you can make some wonderful things with Meccanno. Realistic, working, scale models of real, tangible things – cranes, trains, planes!

But it’s not a toy, is it.  You can’t play with them. Lego is for play.  Lego is fast and colourful and rewarding. And just as creative.  More so in fact - and the minifigures are the best bit!

There are those that would argue that it has changed too much.  The pieces have become larger and less Lego-like, taking some of the creativity and design out of the premise. And some dislike the franchising... the Harry Potter, Spider-Man and Star Wars sets.

To them I say: LOOK UPON THIS BATCAVE AND TREMBLE!

And it’s fan-built too!  Take a look here!

There is something about Lego I never got over.  I’m not sure any boy ever does.  I go to the Lego shop now and look around longingly. I see lots of dads living vicariously through their wide-eyed children. There really is nothing like Lego.  It’s an expensive hobby, granted – but you get the build, the play and then the rebuild and the replay. It is the perfect toy. I have already vowed that my nephew will get Lego for every birthday once he is of age...

And my Lego?  It now sits in my classroom cupboard, and suffers a little bit from time to time, but is largely still intact. And it still gets played with, which is important to me. And I still get to have a little play now and then too – just modelling appropriate play, obviously.

Lego all the way....

And planes or trains?

WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD CHOOSE A TRAIN?!

Don’t get me wrong, there are bad flights, and definite downsides, but flying?  You’re in a chair IN THE SKY!  I never get bored with it.  I like it when the jet-engines come on! I like having a drink before hand, and a drink during, and you’re generally going somewhere nice too.  Flying is wonderful.  Airports are wonderful. Other passengers I can take or leave, and there are bits that stress me out, granted.  But let’s compare...

Trains? Urgh, noisy, crowded, slow, expensive, stressful, late... There is nothing about train travel I enjoy. 

From buying my overpriced ticket, to the scary walk to the door (irrespective of earliness!) where you panic the door may close and your train pull away, to finding a seat without a nasty stain, to avoiding the weirdo, to noisy phone conversations, to impossibly loud screeching and buckling of walls as other trains pass... the whole enterprise is thoroughly unpleasant.

This is why I drive everywhere...

What’s your biggest regret?

I don’t really have many regrets. 

I make most decisions quite carefully, although I’m not especially risk-averse (in the physical, daring sense at least), so between these two factors, there are only rare occasions when I’ve either missed out by avoiding something (regret: inaction) or unwisely chosen to pursue something that turned out badly (regret: action).

I have a sufficiently untroubled life to avoid dwelling on minor historical decisions or indecisions, so my only regrets that come to mind are pretty lame, and possibly likely to have led me – had I pursued them – to somewhere less profitable and enjoyable in my present life. Unsurprisingly, both my regrets fall into the regret: INaction category...

Regret number one: I wish I’d been more of a slut when I was younger.
I am pretty jealous of all the guys I know who went around having sex with loads of guys. I’ve been coupled since seventeen, aside from the odd (sanctioned) recreational assignation, and missed out on slutty teens and slutty twenties.

But I’m aware it generally sounds more fun than it actually is, and half the guys I know who *did* enjoy the penises of others more regularly than I, say they regret it, say it was thoroughly unenjoyable and usually made them miserable afterwards. If not during.

The other half are completely fucked up by the experience and seem incapable of recovering to a point where they can sustain a meaningful relationship again.

So yes, whilst I’m jealous on a superficial level, I think, in retrospect, I’m probably better off as I am.

Regret number two: I wish I’d auditioned for things and given it my all.
I loved theatre as a teen; I loved to act and – to a lesser extent – sing, and I dabbled a little bit. I was reasonably good, within the high school context, but quite fearful about not being the best. (Academically, I was the best, and that made me safe – trying at something and being just okay?  That was an ordeal for me.  Or would have been had I gone through with it.)

I did a couple of auditions, and got parts in a couple of productions, but I look back and realise how much I held back, even once I was in them, even once it got to the performances. I wish I’d auditioned for more things, maybe outside of school, and let myself go a bit. I think I could have been much better and really enjoyed it. My brief forays into theatre were amazing, and I’ve always been a bit cross with myself that I never really went for it.

But... well, they were such time-vampires, and such big commitments. I don’t know -  it couldn’t have hurt, could it...

Day 7: What was the first bit of the Internet that blew your mind?

Dare I talk about the first time I ventured to look at pictures of naked men, on my creaking old family dial-up PC in the corner of my parents’ living room? Circa 1997, it was certainly a game-changer; that’s undeniable. I’d never SEEN porn before. I’d never SEEN a naked dude before. Suddenly I could see what other boys looked like NAKED! And having SEX!

Something blew, but it probably wasn’t my mind.

Thinking back, there was a certain colourful charm to those early, non-paying, gay porn sites that you just don’t get today. You could pick your gallery of preference from a range of available options, usually a sidebar made using frames(!)comprised of buttons made using MS paint(!!), which included such treasures as TWINKS, UNIFORM, JOCKS, BEARS, and so on and so forth.  I want to find a screen shot now.  I wonder if any of them still exist?

But mind blowing?  No – I knew it was there.  It was amazing, please don’t misunderstand me, I was thrilled.  But not mind-blown.

Perhaps, years later, my first (relatively late) foray into online gaming, via the exciting medium of Transformers: War For Cybertron? 2010 was a big year for my Playstation 3. I wasn’t hugely into video games and had never bothered with online interaction.  Why would I want to do that?  But there is something so satisfying about shooting unwitting and very real competitors in the back of the head, then turning into a jet and bombing the fuck out of them, that I was quickly persuaded. I still play it often.  It was always going to be Transformers that sold me on this, I suppose.

And yet, I was fully aware of online gaming. Call Of Duty, Halo and all that other tosh were inescapable, especially working in a school. I knew it was out there, and I found a game the thrilled me, but I probably wouldn’t say mind-blown.

No.

No, I remember perfectly the first mind-blowing thing I saw online.

Something honestly really simple.

I remember it because I couldn’t get over it. I am loathe to say it because it makes me sound so old and so lame, but...

See, I’d seen videos, however small, short and pixelated on my feeble late 90s dial-up.  But one evening, tapping away talking to random weirdos on Yahoo! Chat, a very nice American boy a few years older than me (straight I’m afraid, but thanks for asking) asked if I wanted to see him on webcam.

WHAT? What the fuck?  Is that a thing?!

Why, yes please.  Do go on.

So he switched it on, it took an age to load, and the sound was terrible, but there he was. Smiling, chatting away, talking to me LIVE!  From America!  On my computer!  In my parents’ living room!

I was beside myself. I couldn’t stop laughing, it was so amazing! I didn’t believe it was real at first, so I kept making him do weird proofs: Wave you arms, hold up 4 fingers, put your hands on your head, etc, etc.  He kindly performed like a trained monkey, but I think he was quite excited as it was his new toy.

I was amazed.

I know, I know!  It seems so ordinary and pathetic and stupid now.

I was 17. It was a more innocent time.

It was 1997 for Christ’s sake.

But there you go -  MIND. BLOWN.

I was so enthralled, I quite forgot the fact that I didn’t share the threatening and seedy-sounding fact that I talked to random faraway weirdos with my mother, and quickly shouted: “Mum, quick quick!  Look at this!  He’s in America!!”

She was pretty amazed too.

So there you have it.  Such a simple thing now, but you have to appreciate that this was ground-breaking.

And so much better than all that lovely free porn.