The Little World

Or ” No glue-sniffing in church…”.

I have recently joined a Facebook group associated with 1/35 scale model tanks. It’s a large group and many people send in wonderful pictures of their kits and builds. It has several members besides myself here in Perth.

I sent in three posts this last week revolving around amour kits, but predicated them in the form of ” innocent waif ” joke questions. They have been percolating since and the results are interesting. Some people saw the humour and laughed. Some did not and were scathing about it. I’m relieved that the former group far outnumbered the latter…but it leads me to wonder at the phenomenon of outrage over plastic model tanks.

Have I touched such a raw nerve in the psyche of modellers that Lidocaine is needed? Are the scale modellers of the northern hemisphere dangerously humourless? Have I committed some form of sacrilege? Is there a Church of The Model Tank with angry worshippers therein?

Note: I am far from irreligious and would never annoy others on that basis. No belting about Mecca with a bag of bacon bits and a beer for me. I leave other people’s religions pretty much alone.

Well, if it isn’t a religion, could it be a cult? Or at least a pyramid scheme? Are there missionaries on bicycles knocking on doors and asking people if they have found a panzer IV with separate track links? Do they send out Green And Brown boxes every year? I’m almost afraid to ask.

Should this be so, I can quite see their objection to humour. Laughter has always been an enemy of religion. It was suppressed in many cultures and may be on the way to that same fate in ours. I noted that most of the recent grimsters were North American, but there were a few from the UK. I was surprised at that – a nation that could laugh at Alf Garnett can laugh at anything. But perhaps the advance of the politically-correct mindset in the rest of the culture has now invaded making scale models.

I have no idea what they’ll do when they see my two finished tanks and read the story that goes with them…