When I was a wee lass living on Cedarhurst Drive, I had a birthday party in which I received a model kit of the USS New Jersey. It was an easy thing to assemble, and I loved to look at it and play with it with my army men.

One day my older brother got the HMS Hood as a model kit. I have no idea why. So we tried to put it together, but failed miserably. We didn't understand the concept of glue. The hull never stayed together properly as we tried to assemble it. Then we hit on a brilliant plan. (I would like to say he did, but I have to include myself as a source of blame in this dunce affair.) We decided to melt the plastic together. For this, we used matches.

"Hold the hull together," he said, "while I hold the match underneath it and melt the two sides." Brilliant last words.

As you can tell, it turned into a disaster. The flame burned through the plastic putting a big hole in the hull. My brother became so mad at the outcome that he snatched the model from my hands and snapped it in two.

There went our model ship building craze as we knew that we didn't have the patience to build one.

Yet, thirty years later, I feel like building model ships. Here's a link to one that would be cool. I guess I have to learn what modeling is all about.

http://www.hlj.com/product/FUJ42145

Historical footnote: the HMS Hood was sunk in naval combat with the German battleship, Bismark, on May 24, 1941.

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