On Christmas day I received a charming toy soldier in my stocking.
As you can see he wasn't a typical plastic army man.
This hand-painted middle aged warrior was different.
He wasn't holding a weapon. He was lifting a rock.
I suppose he had been originally made to look like he was loading a trebuchet or dropping the rock off a castle wall onto some enemy soldier below, but for a moment I imagined he was merely building a harmless dry stone wall.
This started my mind (and hands) thinking about how humans play, and how strange it is that at such an early age we start watching and/or acting out violent and destructive scenarios.
I thought about how much fun it is to build things instead.
While it is true there are already all kinds of plastic sets of miniature farm and zoo animals and circus people out there, I wondered still if perhaps tiny plastic people designed to look like they are building dry stone walls might not be a bad idea for children (and grown up kids) to play with too. It could be very creative. The figures could be moved around just like toy soldiers in war scenes, but instead to be working on tiny wall scenes. The carpet could become the pretend field that the wallers are enclosing with small lengths of plastic wall.
