Day Three hundred and twenty one - The leavers dance

I'm unsure whether or not I've written about this before, because I think I did, but not necessarily here. I think I wrote something along the same lines on an online forum I go to because of - yes - sports results. And because the forum itself is fairly eclectic and besides the sports bits they have a bunch of other rooms, I sometimes like to go to some very specific ones and write a bit there - especially the ones who draw heavily from nostalgia. I also know that when what I'm about to write happened, I also discussed it, albeit in a slightly different way, with some friends of mine who share some of the same passions, some of the same interests and hobbies. Though my family life was relatively good and mostly uneventful when I was a kid, our life was not one of luxury. No, though we never lacked for anything, my parents were mostly of the practical sort. Toys were given only on special occasions, and if me or my brother misbehaved or didn't do well in school, they could be easily taken away. All this to say that while we did have our toys - and this is just my point of view, naturally - we never had as many as we wished or asked for. 

So sometime in the mid-to-late 80's I was introduced to The Transformers, though I am fairly certain that I'd had a transforming toy before. But the moment I looked at them, in a supermarket toy aisle, I fell in love with them. I wanted them all, even the ones who didn't particularly catch my eye that day - how I wished I could've taken them all with me that day. But in a rare moment of generosity, my father, my actual father, allowed me to take one of my choice. Now, try as I might I can't exactly recall what was on offer, because to be fair - it seemed like they just went on and on and on. A part of me wants to say that not only were all the original G1 there, but also quite a few of the ones which I know came out a little further down the line. I want to say that the Insecticons were there, that Shockwave was there, that Sky Lynx was there, that Ultra Magnus was there, that the Constructicons were there... but I can't be sure. But what I do know was there were the Dinobots. Those I know for sure were there, because as soon as I saw them I knew I wanted none other than a dinosaur that could transform into a freaking robot and back. There were five of them : Grimlock, who could transform into a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Slag, who turned into a Triceratops. Sludge, who transformed into a Brontosaurus. Snarl, who became a Stegosaurus. And last, but never the least - Swoop, the winged beast, who transformed into Pteranodon. Now, though I wanted them all, I knew that only the one was coming home with me. Which meant that I had to prioritize and quickly. The two I fancied the most were Grimlock and Swoop, and obviously I went with the one that said 'Dinobot Commander' on the box... Grimlock. 

As the years went on, I continued collecting Transformers, though I never did have that many. They were expensive, moreso than most other toys, and I could rarely either justify to myself - let alone my parents - such an exorbitance, and neither was saving up to get them something I could actually do, because I'd rather buy cheaper toys and have more of them. But a day I'll never forget is the day when I went to a shopping center near where I live, and man alive, the toy stores there were some of the best I'd ever seen, and between them they had pretty much everything a young boy could want. But it also seemed top me that in that intervening time, they had gotten much more expensive, and the prices they were being sold for all but made them prohibitive to me. And, being unable to get what I wanted, being unable to afford what I wanted, I did a lot - and I mean a lot - of windowshopping. Somewhere along the way this toy store had a new batch of Transformers, and as soon as I saw them... my heart sank. I wanted all of them. But they were super pricy, and I couldn't even hope to have one, let alone the five that were necessary to combine into one bigger robot - a combiner, which is a gestalt of five different beings. They were called the Predacons, and they were the biggest, baddest, most beautiful toys I'd ever seen. Oh how I wanted them... but, alas, it wasn't meant to be. Neither then nor in the near future would they have been things I could have afforded, and by the time I started working, they were neither a second thought for me - let alone a priority - and nor were they available anymore. But in my heart of hearts I never forgot them, and I knew full well that one day our paths would cross again.

Though I felt tempted these past many years to venture into that hobby again - toy collecting - I resisted the temptation. I was aware of what was on the market, I was an admirer of just how far technology had pushed toys to be much better in terms of quality, articulations, details, and occasionally I'd go to some specialty websites to see what was on offer. But I always had other priorities, other desires, other reasons. And it was this year only that I finally gave in and started collecting again. It took some degree of trial and error, but I finally figured out that what I really wanted were those toys from my youth, rather than the modern versions. And thankfully, I found out that you could find modern reproductions of those same toys - the same molds, the same colours, the same box, the same everything. And I leapt at those, getting a few - a choice few - that I always wanted. And one of my very first purchases was the mighty Predaking - the combined form of the aforementioned Predacons - which came in one nifty giftset.

This very small thing - hah, that's what she said! - made me realize that sometimes, just sometimes, realizing one of your lifelong dreams doesn't have to mean that you found the one and settled down, or bought that house or got that car. Sometimes it's just enough to do something which you've yearned to do for a long time, and the timing was never right until you finally do it. In a sense, these small acts of kindness towards myself - something that had been in short order for a very, very long time - serve as a beacon that lights my path forward. The year is coming to an end, this experiment is coming to an end, and what comes next will not be easy. But it's a road I must travel down for the rest of my life, one I'll walk down alone.