Stealing From A Child

 

I covet Miles’ magnatiles.

If you don’t know, magnatiles are little pieces of colored plastic. Each one has magnets inside their see through shell. You use these magnets to build things rather easily. They simply click together. A collection of these has a variety of shapes so what you can build out of them is quite extensive. Think of them as today’s Lincoln logs without that horrible smell.

I don’t care for most of Miles’ toys; they’re just not for me. The trucks and all that, I have no interest in playing with those. Who wants to get on the ground to push a truck around? Don’t get me started on the Hot Wheels cars, and the cliched response every parent has to them. Yes, you step on them often and yes, doing that hurts like hell. Sometimes I scream, sometimes I yell. More than once I have tossed those things the whole length of the house. I’m a little cooler with the stuffed animals, I get those, either as a thing to clutch while laying in bed, or something that just looks nice. He has more than a few Simpson’s stuffed animals. When he gets to action figures, like he really gets to them, I think our interests will dovetail. I will force him to take them out the packaging though, I’m not starting that bullshit.

The magnatiles are something else. To me they represent potential making supplies. In recent years, I’ve done a lot with magnets. I have mailed them all over the world for folks to drop in random places, as well as leaving tons of them around my area. All you have to do is stick them to a surface that…accepts magnets (I have no idea the science language here) and then walk away. It’s an easy public art show without all the needless damage to public or private property.

So, when I see Miles’ magnatiles littering the house, I want them. I’ve told him this. I’ve even told his mother this, who has warned me against them disappearing from his collections. Some might even call her warnings, “mean,” or “threatening.” No matter, as soon as he loses interest, I’m going to take every single one of them and glue stuff to them. I’ve thought about buying my own, but I don’t want to have to sneak them through the house. Could you imagine getting caught with magnatiles not intended for the boy? No way am I going to cover them up and walk them inside like someone taking illicit “reading” material out of a magazine shop in the 1990’s.

To work through some of these issues, I forced Miles to star in a forty-five second movie about this very subject. If I were making underground movies in the 1920’s, this would have been an achievement, instead it was something I could put together on my phone in less than ten minutes. I think about this sort of thing all the time. Anyway, whenever we do things like this, mostly photo shoots, he’s been a good sport. He does like to use the camera which brings mixed results. At some point I’m going to let him shoot something and then stick it together as his first movie. If Ben Affleck can do it, so can Miles.