As the song says, “enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think”. In other words, life is finite and time is short. And this doesn’t just apply to pets, and people with interesting obituaries.
Or as another song put it, “the future’s uncertain and the end is always near“. On that occasion Jim Morrison not only knew what he was talking about, he even managed to explain it coherently.
But what light can building model aeroplanes shine on our habitual denial of mortality? As it turns out, a few insights around fragility and stockpiling. Not stockpiling essentials in the face of existential threat or pointless political disruption, but something else entirely.
But let’s start with fragility, because it’s more intuitive – most of us have been told at some point, “Don’t touch that or you will break it”.
Sic transit whatever
The transient nature of plastic model aeroplanes is a metaphor for our existence – these are fragile creations. While the basic structure is robust, the nature of an aeroplane means that your model has small bits and pieces which detach easily. Even though a real life radio aerial is rendered at the scale thickness of a scaffolding pole, it is still fairly slender. It will snap off without much provocation. And while undercarriage can probably support the weight of the model itself, any more stress causes catastrophic failure. This may explain my passing interest in materials technology a few years back.
Unless stored properly, models also gather serious amounts of dust, especially around all those tiny appendages. Something to do with static electricity. So models attract the attention of careless people who like dusting, or dust obsessively whether they like doing it or not. Duster always beats model in this variant of rock – paper – scissors.
Even when your model aeroplanes are intact and spotless, they are in competition with the vision of newer, shinier alternatives. The kind of competition you may find yourself in some day. The one time favourite is neglected, damaged, neglected some more. Until eventually, there is no other option – it gets dumped.
Like [spoiler alert] Puff the Magic Dragon, or the person who came second in a tragic broken relationship.
Plastic modelling in the circular economy
More advanced modellers harvest any usable spare parts from the broken remains (which should remind us to fill in our donor cards).
So ironically, a hobby based on plastic, toxic chemicals and other environmentally unfriendly stuff teaches us about reuse and recycling – although perhaps not about reducing consumption. So we learn about the eternal cycle of life, death and rebirth.
The apparently more eco-friendly option, even in the olden days, was Lego (the good people at @LegoLostAtSea might disagree). My mother approved – she wasn’t exactly an eco-warrior but the reuse/recycle thing made Lego more economical. And she went on and on about dust, even more than Philip Pullman.
But I preferred Airfix kits to Lego, and I probably still do. Mostly.
A compelling metaphor
So the life cycle of the model aeroplane, from desire preceding conception, all the way to disposal of the remains, becomes a compelling metaphor for the transient nature of life. And much like our own, the model aeroplane’s remains last for a very long time. They end up as nanoplastics, which are then consumed by other creatures. (On Ilkely Moor etc.)
But the analogy gets even more pointed than that, as we will discover another time.