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It’s never really been a question of what to buy. I’ve always been able to find answers to that. A friend who is trying to pull me into the area thinks it’s a question of whether to buy at all. But it’s not. The answer to that question has always been “yes”. The real question, that has been eating at me for several years now, and with increased intensity over the last six months or so, is much deeper than that. I’ve been keeping track of the market for years now, and have been on the verge of buying once or twice already. What to buy has obviously changed several times during that period, and the cost involved has certainly changed drastically as well. Now is the first time, though, that I’m starting to feel that the quality I would be getting can somehow justify the price I would be paying. Still, it feels a bit painful when I consider that it may just be the geek boy in me wanting another shiny toy to take apart, “figure out how it works”, and then drop on the side with all those other toys in my past. And I can already see the look of supressed shock on my mother’s face as I tell her how much it cost. I always have a number of different ways to judge the toys I buy. I consider their build quality, their visual appeal, the way they feel in my hand as I use them, how much I expect that I will actually use it, and the way my mother will react when I tell her how much it cost. I always seem to go a little bit further on this last scale with every purchase I make. This one, I feel, would certainly take the prize. So no, the question is not what to buy, it is not whether to buy and it’s not even when to buy. All those things have relatively clear answers. I can even find answers to questions like How will I keep myself from simply losing interest and placing it in the drawer with the rest of my old toys? or What does Kaia really think behind her facade of “sure, go ahead and buy it”?
The truly difficult question is this one: How will I handle the look of horror on my mother’s face and the disapproving timbre of her voice as I tell her?
