"Modeling Skills"

Not recommended for kids without said skills, read the box on the $40 plastic model M1025Humvee that Dylan and I bought today. He's only built two other models, and none in the past year, but he definitely has the hand-eye coordination, the focus, and perhaps most importantly, the patience required to assemble this elaborate model vehicle.



It's been something we've been intending to do for many months some Saturday (buy a model), but with soccer games and birthday parties and play dates and shoe shopping and science projects and illnesses, we never got to it until today.

And what a journey it was. Relying on my memory (never a good idea), we first searched the length of Ocean Avenue, then West Portal, then Irving -- all good guesses -- but none of them yielded the desired (and fondly remembered) model shop that used to exist somewhere out there.

Finally, I gave up on the Sunset and drove over to the Richmond, to the Hobby Shop on Geary Blvd. that Dylan's oldest brother used to enjoy. Here, we found the military vehicle of his choice. It will take many weeks, I suspect, for this model to be completed.

That's okay. He likes elaborate products, like big books. I hadn't realized just how far his historical readings have transported him from the norm for 11-year-olds until he told me that for a school project he happened to mention the leaders from World War Two (Stalin, Hirohito, Mussolini, Hitler, Roosevelt, and Churchill) that no one else in his class had ever heard of anyone except Hitler.

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