What Made Me Suddenly Remember This?

No idea - none at all.  Where does this stuff come from and why does it suddenly pop into my head?    It's not like I don't have lots of other things to think about.  Weird.

I had a sudden thought which sent me searching on a Christmas present I got for my son way back in about 1992 or 93.  Of course I found a page about it... (the internet has at least one page about everything)

The Steel Tec Plane

He was about 8 or 9 years old at the time and loved messing about with fiddly little things and building stuff.  I figured it was the perfect project to keep him busy.  And so it was, on and off for a few months. 

One of the few multi-model sets was the 564-piece No. 7130 Mega Sized Planes and Copters set (shown below).

Yes, it was 564 pieces.  When he worked on it, he worked for quite a while, then he'd leave it sit. He never said anything to me about it, I'm guessing it required quite a bit of concentration, so he would work on it in spurts.  He did manage to finish the plane - pretty impressive that he stuck with it.  I figured he'd get bored and not finish it, but I was wrong.

One day my son and his friend (a boy who was a year older) were playing at our house.  His mom stopped by to pick him up.  We were talking and she saw the completed plane. 

She:  Oh I got "S" one of those last Christmas, they're very complicated aren't they!  I had to help him so much I think I did half of it.  Did you have to help your son a lot?

Me: *blink* 

Me:  Um... I didn't help him at all.  Uh... I gave it to him and he took it in his room and worked on it.   I figured it might keep him busy on days he couldn't play outside.  I didn't want him to finish it too fast. 

Her: *blink*  Her really?  Not at all?

I still remember the surprised look on her face.  I don't know if she believed me about the "help" part.  But all I could think was... Help him?  Doesn't that rather defeat the purpose? 

I could be wrong about that.  I looked on it more as a time filler for him that he would like.  It never occurred to me that he wouldn't be able to put it together on his own. I was just hoping the size of the set would keep him busy for about 6 months.  
 
I don't know why but that conversation still makes me laugh. 

It also makes me wonder about how much kids can do when you hand them something and say, "here you go, have fun" and leave them to it.

Then again I was never much of a hovering mom. 

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 12:59 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 492 words, total size 3 kb.