Is this an "old man's hobby"?

[Atlantia]

Originally Posted by Norman McCormick

Hi Gene,
To follow on from your deliberations a selection of T.V. programmes shown at 5 p.m. weekdays when I was a lad. Things were definitely different in those days. I remember vividly as an adjunct to our History lessons our teacher arranged to take us to Kelvingrove Museum and once there the class was taken down into the basement and given a lecture on Medieval Arms and Armour complete with the curator dressed in a suit of armour handing round actual weapons for us to look at, I was 9 years old, happy days. The Museum used to be 'chock a block' with A&A including an Ethnographic Hall, now there is one small gallery upstairs for everything. It is very sad as Kelvingrove has one of the best collections in the World mostly in storage now. It seems anachronistic to me that movies and games are so much more violent and visually graphic these days and yet historical A&A is hidden away and shunned like a leper. As a kid everybody had a 'tin hat' and a bayonet or two with badges, patches and the like, I suppose this was more due to the period being in the first few decades after the war and these things were readily available at not a lot of money and no stigma attached to collecting these objects. My mother always knew what kind of movie was on at the local cinema on a Saturday afternoon as the children, me included, would be coming up the road fencing, pulling bows or drawing six guns all imaginary of course the game continuing all week until the next Saturday and another visit to the cinema. Both my children, boy and girl, played with wooden swords, "By the power of Greyskull", and toy guns and when old enough an air rifle and pistol, amongst other things of course, and neither of them are raging sword swinging gun toting bampots in direct contradiction to what some would have us believe. There are some young and energetic collectors in our Forum Family and hopefully they will keep the flame going and if there are any more out there who are interested JOIN IN you don't have to spend a fortune to have an interesting time here.
My Regards,
Norman.

Absolutely mate.
Although your pictoral examples are all middle aged men with weapons, so they do perpetuate the steryotype somewhat

I've had an interest in knives since childhood.
I remember being on holiday in Jersey at age 7 or 8 and using my spending money to but a sheath knife (yes really) while my parents backs were turned!
It was a different time. The shop keeper just said "are you sure your dad said it's ok?"
Then when I was about 10/11 a family friend let me fire a flintlock dueller in his garage!
Click, fizzzzzzzz................ BOOOMMMM!!!! LOL

And I was hooked from that moment.

EDIT: My mother took the knife away and said I couldn't have it back until I was 11!
I got it back at 10! (yay)