So when this whole thing with my nephew started, as my previous blog entry pointed out, I was all Trekkie. At the time, I had a little over a hundred Trek action figures all stored away in their pristine blister packs (I had them displayed on the walls, but they took up too much room from the autographed movie posters and were too cluttered... yes, I know, I'm a closet collector/Trekkie). Also about this time, I had just discovered Star Wars fan films on Wikipedia, in particular the excellent film Figure Club (http://www.atomfilms.com/film/figure_club.jsp), a spoof of Fight Club and the eccentricities of toy collectors who opened the rare figures they collected to 'fight' them in an underground club. Also there was another one about a guy who was justifying his collecting through his nephew and discovering how much fun it is to play with these toys after a couple decades of foolishly trying to blend in to the adult 'grown-up' world. I took that lesson to heart, and introduced my then 3 year old padawan to the joys of playing make-believe. After an afternoon of destroying blister-packed figure cards, opening every figure I had no matter how rare, and playing in the back-yard with him, I realized that all these years of hoarding and freaking-out-over-anyone-daring-to-touch-THE-COLLECTION, wasn't all in waste. We had a blast! Now he loves building styrofoam bases with Star Wars figs, (either Lego or 3&1/2, recently purchased for his tastes... unfortunately NOT a Picard fan, he does like Kirk though), flying around the backyard with spaceships, and climbing his tree fort laden with at least 2-3 lightsabers. Dressed in his Jedi Academy robe (earned in Disneyland where he waded into Vader with NO hesitation...that's my boy!!), he gallivants around the galaxy of his imagination, where every child should have the chance to live. If any of you hoarding collectors out there have not tried this yet and have access to molding a young mind, I highly recommend biting the bullet and tearing open some toys today! Rip them open and throw the cards and boxes away, they will never be worth as much as seeing the joyous light in a small child's eyes. Or sit down and play a few rounds of a Lego Star Wars or Episode III with them at least. Be warned, when a small child is able to completely pown your gaming skills, don't come crying to me. I close by saying this. Remember when you were a child, and you walked down that toy store aisle where all the Star Wars toys were, and didn't you wish you could have them all to play with? Reward someone close to you by fulfilling that wish, and you'll get that feeling back tenfold.

Next story: Giving away an original Kenner Millenium Falcon custom hand-painted to look like the studio model for his 5th birthday (as long as I can figure out how to import the pictures).