Living Vicariously Can Be Fun

Okay, time for another dose of complete honesty from me.  I love toys.  I like gadgets and fake swords and little Hot Wheels cars and action figures.  Definitely action figures.  When I was a kid, we'd play the simplest, made up games.  We played "War" which just meant shooting invisible bad guys and making machine gun noises.  We'd play "Race" and drive our little cars all over the house.  We'd play "Peoples" (we weren't good at naming our games) and have our Ninja Turtles fight Batman before being punched off the top of the stairs.  And it was a blast.  There was never a dull moment when we had our toys with us.

Then I hit an age where it wasn't acceptable to play like that anymore.  The other kids my age were graduating to video games and, more importantly, sports.  So I traded in my impossible fight scenarios (GI Joe and Shredder vs. Optimus Prime and a stuffed animal) for basketball in the driveway.  And as much as I love basketball and the new things I became interested in, I always missed the toys.  And more times than I'd like to admit, I'd pass the action figure aisle of Wal-Mart or Target and get mad that they didn't have awesome toys like that when I was a kid.  And I'd wish I had a reason to buy them.

Then my son came along.  And just like me, he loves having little miniature versions of superheroes.  And as soon as he had the motor skills to play with them, I bought him as many as I could justify (1267 of them).  And now I get to play with them!  And the older he gets, the more he wants the characters that are in the movies I like.  So when I saw Captain America and secretly wanted the toys, I just showed him the trailer and BOOM, he wanted the toys too.  So now "he" has a Captain America shield, Captain America mask, Thor hammer, Thor mask, Wolverine mask, and an action figure of basically every superhero that I care about.

And with The Avengers coming out in about a month (YAY!), there are a whole slew of new toys coming out to accompany it.  And since being a toy collector is sad and lonely, I get to use my son as an excuse to buy Hulk hands and an Iron Man blaster and whatever else I can find that "he" will like.  So add that to the list of perks I didn't realize I'd have when I had kids.  And also add the fact that we'll get to go see all these awesome movies together when he gets old enough to see them (but before he thinks I'm lame for liking them too).