A Responsibility Probe Droid. It's a Good Bet Adulthood Knows I'm Here.

I feel like I’ve been a pretty productive guy lately. I’ve changed burnt out light bulbs around the house, paid the bills, posted our Geek Tournament (which I’m going to keep mentioning for the rest of the month so get used to it), held a pretty successful recovery mission for Nerf darts underneath our furniture and finally acquired the M16A4 on the multiplayer mode of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Impressive, right?

Okay, so maybe this would only make me a marginally productive person compared to some of you. However, considering mine and my wife’s work schedules (two words: messed and up), the attention we need to pay to our kids’ homework, their feelings and their necessity to be fed and my natural instinct to sit in one place as long as possible, my productivity is currently experiencing an upward trend.

Yet each time I pass through my dining room (a necessity in my home unless I’d rather exit out my front door and walk around to the back of the house to access my kitchen) a testament to my true lack of free time looms in the corner. There sits the Lego AT-AT (model #8129 for those of you scoring at home) that I asked for my wife to let me buy as a gift from her to me for Christmas.

Imperial Walkers in The Empire Strikes Back loomed on the horizon as a symbol of the Rebel Alliance’s inability to escape from the evil grip of the Empire. The inhabitants of Echo Base thought they had found a safe place in the far corner of the galaxy where, even under harsh conditions, they could catch their breath and formulate a strategy without the fear of attack. Alas, eventually, the Walkers arrived.

Similarly, the unassembled Lego version stands reminding me of my inability to escape from adult responsibility. It serves as a reminder that, while I can sneak in the occasional free-for-all shootout, my time is still at a premium. The couple hours it would take to assemble the set is just out of my reach. I glance over to it and then to the clock to see if I can fit it in, but there just doesn’t seem to be a big enough window of assembly time.

I start to toy with the idea of putting together some of it now and some the next day. Then I try to imagine how many pieces would be lost or knocked to the floor by my sons or how upset my wife will be that the majority of our home’s available eating surfaces have now been covered in Lego. I then quickly dismiss that approach and decide to wait until the time is right, when I can dedicate the appropriate amount of time to the project and treat it with the respect and solemnity it deserves. This vision always involves the Imperial March playing on a constant loop in the background (note to self: remember to download Star Wars soundtrack on iTunes).

In the meantime, there the box remains there like a two feet high monolith (with the Han Solo minifigure picture cut out from the sides because my son needed to use them on a project for school), reminding me of the precarious nature of the dual life I lead.

Of course, this delay may be a blessing in disguise, seeing as I currently have no idea where I’m going to put it once it’s put together.