The fuselage of a model rocket ship is pretty much the only object that suggests itself, and even then only after the cardboard tube has been wrapped in silver foil. But at my age I really can't imagine running around the living room, a home-made model rocket ship held in the air, shouting "zoom, zoom" and requesting permission to land on the sofa.
So I guess this cardboard tube obsession must be a memory trigger from days at kindergarten, when collecting cardboard tubes was essential for all boy's craft projects because rocket ships were the only things we made.
"What are you making today Stephen?"
"I'm making a rocket ship out of a cardboard tube."
"But didn't you make a rocket ship out of a cardboard tube last week?"
"Yes, but that was only a toilet roll tube. This one's made out of the sturdier variety of tube used to transport unfoldable posters and parchment, which means it can go to Mars."
Apparently a ghost synapse from my five-year-old self still wanders through my brain looking for things to do: a ghost synapse summoned back from its cellular grave by the sight of a cardboard tube. It could be worse, I suppose. It could be a memory trigger from childhood that involves urinating in public pools, for example. Not that I go swimming in public these days; not with a grievous and angry incision scar like mine.
But let us not dwell on the distant echoes of yesteryear. To paraphrase Saint Paul's famous epistle to the Corinthians: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things, and then one day I needed to have heart surgery." Indeed, and no doubt you are wondering what possible connection could exist between cardboard tubes and coronary artery bypass surgery. After all, it's not as if I am going to manufacture a larger than life model of my heart using cardboard tubes as the arteries, is it?
Or is it? I discovered this small model of a heart in an examination room while waiting for my cardiologist to arrive. Although intriguing enough to look at and photograph, it was a solid lump of plastic lacking any interactive elements; about as useful as a Mr Potato Head missing its stick-on facial features. What a pity, I thought, that its various components cannot be removed and reattached in order to demonstrate the ins and outs of specific surgical procedures. I could make a superior model, I decided, with a bucketful of papier-mâché, spirit gum, and several detachable cardboard tubes of assorted lengths and diameters.When completed, and after being painted an appropriate shade of Valentine red, my lightweight plug-and-play model heart would be a perfect teaching tool: "To replace a defective artery with a new, disease-free artery you simply pull the old tube out and then fold tab A of the new tube into corresponding slot A of the new tube, and repeat the process with tab B and slot B, etc. Of course, you'll be working with real arteries so it will be a bit messier than this, but you get the general idea. Ooops. Oh no. My thumb has just accidentally crushed the left ventricle."
I'm not proposing that my cardboard tube model heart should be employed in an actual medical school, obviously, but for today's super-fat kids in kindergarten, well, it might give them some idea of what's in store for their cholesterol-soaked organs at some point in the future. How I wish I had been taught such important lessons when I was their age, instead of making stupid rocket ships.
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