Back to the other memory which I think takes place before my bother was born and that would put us in either Ohio or Florida. I was at the Commissary (grocery store on an Air Force base) with my Dad.
I remember just being in some blah mood. We got up to the cashier and he asked me if I wanted a pack of gum and I said, no. He asked me if I wanted some other impulse buy item and again I said no.
Finally he asked me if I wanted a bag of army men. A serious bag ‘O 100 army men – one hundred – army men. Crawling guys, mortar guys, mind sweeper guys, radio guys, kneeling rifle guys, those guys their gun above their head (about to bayonet somebody or crossing a stream?) Oh oh oh, don’t forget my favorite, mounted machine gun guy. Oh yeah, I loved those guys. Army men are so much fun.
But again, I said no.
What the hell was I thinking?! I would have had a BLAST with 100 army men!
Why didn’t my Dad check me for a fever? I can think of no other reason for my behavior. I must have been sick, deathly sick. It was obviously negligent parenting. He should have checked bought the army men for me and rushed me to the hospital!
Every time I see army men to this day, over 30 years later, I still hit myself!
3 comments:
I have a 5 year old niece and every time we go visit her, I can't wait to see what new toys she has for me to play with. I have awesome memories from 6-12 or so of expansive lego sets, that kept growing and growing, with 12v lights, railways, then technics and more and more complicated sets. Then, and I have no idea when this was, or how sudden it was, I stopped playing with them. And everything got given away. The joy I get out of my nieces toys makes me think I should just go and spend an adult amount of money on some 'kids' toys and have some fun. If the PS3 requires over a thousand dollars to enjoy pretty much the same play experience as I have been having for the last 10 years in games, maybe a few hundred dollars on 'simpler' and more 'kid' toys can provide me with more fun. OOhhhhh - slot car sets!
I also never had army men, and think that i would have enjoyed them, but for me, the slap on the head moment is when I think of all the lego I no longer have.
I played with army men well into my teens. I was at least over 16 when me and a cousin created a firecracker based warhammer like ruleset for army men (basically distance from one guy to the next determined the distance the firecracker was placed from the target army man). We'd go into the field next door with the bucket O' men (tanks and artillery as well) a brick of firecrackers (regular and the smaller lady fingers), and a ruler, and blow the crap out of everything.
Way back when one of Westwood's artist quit to go work for somebody else for a whole lot more money. The two guys running the company said, you know we have few key people who have been around for ever, and have been getting raises, but really aren't getting paid up to industry standard with how the industry itself has exploded. Let’s give them a big raise so they don't get stolen by other companies as well.
First thing I did was go out and buy a huge slot car boxed set along with 2 extra cars, and tons of extra track. I set up the boxed set once in my tiny studio apartment and then took it down soon after when I got an apartment with my girlfriend. I never set it up again. I finally gave it all away to my friend’s kids when I moved to Australia.
And my favorite army man game was as follows. Everybody gets an equal number of them and you have to set them up. They aren't set up to fight each other, just as if they were attacking forward... where the players then stand with a BB Gun or air rifle. You take turns shooting and remove any dead guys. Who ever has the most dead army men at the end wins.
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