Being a sort of amateur artist with extremely artistical tendencies, I naturally love to paint. My daughter also likes to paint. So one way to combine our love for sloshing colors on stuff with paint brushes with our love for playing nerdy role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons is to buy and paint our own miniatures to play with in the game. I used to do this a lot when I was a single goofer with time and money on my hands, so I have boxes and boxes of painted little people and little critters made out of lead or pewter or plastic.
When doing these dastardly deeds of nerdling paintery to little metal people, we have to choose how we are going to go about it. Different paints work in different ways. I like to use brightly colored enamels like the Testors stuff I have used since the 1960’s. The Princess prefers acrylic because it is less permanently messy. Once you laminate your fingertips with enamel, you have to wear blue and green and brown on your hands in school for most of a week as it wears off. Acrylic is less socially mortifying, in that it is removed more easily as a water-based paint. Even after it dries on your hands, it still comes off with a little scrubbing and you don’t have to use turpentine.
Finding new figures to paint is not as easy as it once was. You used to be able to locate such things easily in the nearest comic book shop or game shop. Hobby Lobby and Michael’s used to have sections where you could find the figures as well as the paints. Now that those things are becoming extinct and increasingly rare, you have to take advantage of serendipity. We discovered a magically preserved and timeless game shop in a dying mall next to the movie theater where we recently went to watch Jumanji. I bought the elves above in that shop from the young elf running the place all by himself. An elf bard with a fiddle and bow, and another elf with a crossbow. I also found two exquisite sculpts of children which I haven’t even removed from the card yet. All that is left to do now is argue over who is going to paint what. And that can be a difficult thing. I am older and cannier than her, but she outweighs me by ten pounds. The decision has not been made yet.
I am finishing this essay on painting nerdling painter-deeds with a look at two finished works from my glorious nerd-painting past. Ganser the Wizard of Gansdorf is actually painted in acrylic, while Anya the Amazon is painted in enamel. I did them both in the 1980’s. We shall soon see if I can still do as good as I used to do. And if the Princess can match me or surpass me. It is not actually a contest, but I still hope I win.
And, of course, I have hoarding disorder so bad that I can’t resist starting new collections of dolls when toy-makers are putting out the new stuff at Christmas, even though the Princess has thoroughly outgrown dolls. And I am not alone in having hoarding disorder. While we were cleaning bedrooms, my daughter found a fluffy rug that would be perfect for the bathroom. But no. My wife is saving it. It has to stay folded and put away where it won’t get dirty. We have closets stuffed full of clothing and other stuff that is rarely or never used. And I do not dare throw any of it out or move it to anyplace else. I can move my stuff, not hers.
‘There are dolls everywhere in my room, so any attempt to clean starts with picking them up off the floor and putting them somewhere safer. These four are now living behind the TV. I just wish they would stay put for a while and quit leaping off shelves when they come alive after midnight every night.
The baseball player in the upstairs sitting room where nobody sits, once spent an entire winter at the bottom of the swimming pool. That’s why his blue uniform turned a bit putrid green. He stays in this room with my Wish-nik Troll from 1967 and the Winkie Soldier from Oz, who is naturally green in the face and never took a swim.
“Mickey, What’s Wrong With You?”
Yes, I am trying to answer that old question that old girlfriends used to ask me back when they were young and I was young and too stupid to answer honestly. You know, the question always asked right before they tell you, “Why don’t we just be friends and leave it at that.”
After having spent my Christmas money from Mom on an 18-inch giant gorilla action figure of Kong on Skull Island to terrorize all the dolls on the Barbie Shelf after midnight when all the dolls secretly come to life, I feel more prepared than ever before to answer that particular question.
I am not in my second childhood. I am still in my first one. Yes, I reached the ripe old age of 12 and then Peter Pan Syndrome set in bigtime. On the inside, I will always be 12 years old. I still, at 61, play games and play with toys. I never really grew up.
I am not a Brony, but I am still buying My Little Pony dolls, and can name all six of the main characters. From left to right, Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Apple Jack, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight Sparkle. And yes, I have watched the cartoon show and like it, but am still not a Brony, okay? There are a lot of things wrong with me, but I am not that bad! My kids, however, are embarrassed to be seen with me when I am shopping for toys at Walmart, Toys-R-Us, or Goodwill.
I still play with the HO scale model trains that I have owned and collected since the first year I was actually twelve. I would love to get them running again. The Snowflake Special and the Toonerville Trolley seen in the picture both still ran the last time I tested them four years ago. I still love to paint buildings and HO scale people to live in my little train town. I am still working on a set of townspeople that I bought back in 1994. German villagers circa 1880.
I have always been fascinated by imaginary places and the people who live in them. Especially imaginary places in the fiction of the past. Places like the castle of Minas Tirith in the realm of Gondor in Middle Earth, and like Pellucidar that David Innes and Abner Perry discovered at the Earth’s Core in their boring machine called “the Prospector”as part of the Pellucidar series created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan novels. So, another thing wrong with me is that I live mostly in the past and entirely in the worlds of my imagination. I have very little to do with the so-called “real world”.
So, to sum up, the things wrong with Mickey are; A. He’s a goofy old child. B. He still plays with toys. C. He likes girly stuff. D. He confuses fantasy with reality. No wonder the girls used to run away screaming. And I haven’t even added the part about Mickey thinking he is a nudist now and walking around the house naked when no one else is home and forced to see the full horror of it.
But maybe you should think on it for a moment more. What if the things that are wrong with Mickey are actually good things? What if he’s found the secret to long life and happiness in spite of a world full of troubles and illnesses and blechy stuff? It could be true…
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