2009-06-21T05:54:04-07:00 241 <p>When I was little -- I'm thinking about 6 -- my beloved grandfather (who was an E9 in the Marines) painted his old footlocker orange, with black hardware, and gave it to me to store the toys I had at my grandparents' house. Many years later -- I'm thinking after I bought my first house -- my grandmother reminded me of the trunk, and asked if I wanted it. Of course! And I used it to store all my old treasures. I'm not a really sentimental guy, but I had, most importantly, all of my old Legos, an old RC car, lots of magic sets, a couple yo-yo's, hackey sacks, Silly Putty eggs, Slime buckets, a Rubik's cube, along with other toys like it, etc.</p> <p>The point of this post is that I also had a Big Trak stored in there. This thing had survived my dad kicking it across the floor when I was a kid, though he had killed the dumpster I had that plugged into it, but it had still worked as of the last time I tried to make it go, so I've kept it, now, for something close to 30 years.</p> <p>Several years ago, I got the wild hair that I would open up the trunk, and let my kids play with what was inside. I didn't see it coming. I thought I could impart my love and care for my "things" to my children. I was wrong. Lots of stuff is now missing, and I know I'll never find it again. I started losing control of "my" Legos to my son, who immediately fell in love with them. Now, that's what I wanted to happen, but I didn't understand how his desire to play with them would interact with my deep-seated need to prevent him from breaking or losing them. I started to lay down some rules about them, but then my aunt and uncle found a PILE of Legos in a garage sale, and we've made those "his." I've since re-packed "mine," except that I let him have all the minifigs and accessories, since "his" didn't have any. Most of those I'll probably never get back too. Sigh.</p> <p>So, yesterday, we had our big, neighborhood-wide garage sale. We did pretty well. What didn't sell, and we could fit in the van, we took to Goodwill. What didn't fit, we put at the curb. An hour later, the desk, mini-trampoline, and box springs were gone. We got a lot of "stuff" cleaned out, which is great. It was a project that allowed me to link together lots of reorganization in the house, garage, and my office. In the process of doing all of this yesterday, I noticed that the Big Track was out of my trunk and sitting on some shelves. I made a mental note, because I knew that I would be reorganizing my "stuff" soon.</p> <p>Well, this morning, I dragged my trunk in from the garage, cleaned it off, and started putting some things in there. I went to get my Big Trak, and I found that one of the wheels had been broken clean off. I'm... disappointed, and thinking I'm going to go rounding up all of my old "stuff" that I can, including any Lego minifigs I can find.</p> <p>UPDATE: While in the process of throwing away the Big Trak, I decided to give some epoxy a try. We'll see how that goes...</p> 2009-06-21T06:04:46-07:00