While shopping for the Boy for Christmas I came across something I wanted to buy him very badly. It was a plastic model of a human skull. With removable rubber brain.
"An Excellent Thing" I thought to myself "For him to study...Invaluable preparation for his career as a brain surgeon....".
Now the boy has never expressed any such interest, but I liked it and so was attempting to persuade myself that he would as well.
$100.00 is a lot to pay for a lump of plastic, no matter what it's shape.
"What attracts me to it?", I wondered as I handled the package. It was in a small independantly owned hobby store in the neighborhood. Is it an echo of my own bereft childhood, growing up without a plastic skull of my own to hold onto and cradle? Or is it the fact that it comes in a plain, square box, without illustration, exactly as one would imagine it should come from an anatomical supply house? It is, after all, the perfect "Memento Mori", and when he wasn't playing with it we could keep it on my desk....
I consult with his mother, ever tactful she advises me that his tastes are somewhat less eccentric than my own, perhaps ....
And she lists a pile of things that she's certain he would like, more practical and useful things....
On the one hand I'm somewhat relieved.
$100.00 is a lot of money for a plastic skull.
But I'm saddened as well, by the fact that it won't be able to rest upon my desk. The perfect gift.
I reassure myself that a real one would be better, and I'm right, plastic is a poor substitute for bone. And real ones are everywhere, the trick is to find one, ethically sourced, not from a chinese medical supply house, but preferably ploughed up in a farmers field, although this then raises a whole new set of ethical questions about native rights and burials...