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Print By Kent d Curry It was going to be the ultimate father-son weekend. I was taking my seven-year-old to Comic-Con International, the biggest, craziest collection of pop culture fandom in the world. It was everything we expected. Nearly 100,000 people crammed into the San Diego Convention Center last July to experience every possible variation of comics, movies, TV shows, gaming, sculpting, and card games.
Besides the endless panel discussions on every pop culture topic imaginable, there were over 50 rows of booth after booth after booth containing rare Golden Age comics for tens of thousands of dollars, an 18-wheeler with a tarp of Omega Prime (from the Transformers), a Ghost Rider motorcycle, original comic strip art, movie props (the Scarecrow costume and Batman’s utility belt from Batman Begins), and artist’s alley, where you could get original sketches by well-known artists. However, as far as my child was concerned there were only two booths in the over 500,000 square foot building worth seeing. A mere seven rows apart and just down a horizontal aisle sat his twin versions of heaven—a Lego booth of Bionicles and a Lego booth of Star Wars toys. At the former were endless Bionicles (kind of 21st century robot characters) to buy, as well as masks and sponge weapons (those rocked), a free Bionicle comic book, an exclusive preview of the next Bionicle DVD, a huge hanging Visorak (the evil Bionicles), and some appropriate jungle decorations. The Star Wars Lego booth featured a huge Starship Destroyer that took two employees three months (working full 40+ hour weeks) to build, a life-sized Darth Vader and Chewbacca built out of Legos, and—coolest of all—a moving, head-rotating, all-out-of-Legos R2-D2 that roamed the aisles. All quite wonderful.
Except, three days between two booths is well…let’s just say no two booths are that interesting for that long, especially when there’s so many more to enjoy. However, this was the depth and breadth of Caleb’s worldview and he was content within it. He missed the hottest next things, endless autographs, and amazing world premieres. He traded the exploding wonder around us for a cozy familiarity.
That almost makes him an adult. Too often we’re content to remain in our customary ruts, the habitual mediocre, rather than risk the extraordinary, the different, and the challenging. Too often that fresh experience is spiritual in nature. Like the prophet Elisha telling his servant to ignore the surrounding natural invaders and perceive the glory of a larger angelic force protecting them (II Kings 6:17), we frequently see only what we’ve trained ourselves to notice—even when friends, or an exasperated father, pull us toward something greater. Let’s recognize this tugging toward the vibrant spiritual, even when it calls for radical change, for the benefits can be great. Because if we don’t, at some point even the Lego booths will get old.
© 2006, ninetyandnine.com ------- Kent Curry is an executive editor at ninetyandnine.com. |
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