Figure This Out

There are Saturdays where you get up, drive to a car boot sale and come home with a bag of nothing in particular. And then there are Saturdays where you get up, drive to a car boot sale in Mount Waverley, and come home with Gunnery Sergeant Hartman screaming insults at you from a box.

This was one of the good Saturdays.

An old bloke had a table full of bits and pieces he was looking to clear out. The usual car boot sale mix — old tools, kitchenware, a few books. And then sitting right there among all of it, almost new and still in its box, was a Gunnery Sergeant Hartman action figure from Full Metal Jacket. The box had big bold writing across the front that read: PUSH MY BUTTON, YOU SLIMEBAG.

I stopped. I stared. I picked it up and I did exactly what the box told me to do.

He started shouting. Insults and curse words, one after another, full volume, right there at the car boot sale. For a moment I felt exactly like Private Pyle standing in that barracks — wide-eyed and not quite sure what was happening to me. It was glorious. I handed over whatever the man was asking for it and walked back to my car grinning like an idiot.

Eleven Years Old and Full Metal Jacket

What really got me though — beyond the thrill of the find — was the nostalgia that hit the moment I saw that face. Because I was eleven years old the first time I watched Full Metal Jacket. Sitting with my dad and my brother, the three of us watching Stanley Kubrick do what Stanley Kubrick does. I was probably too young for it. But that is often how the best memories work.

R. Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman was something else entirely. A force of nature in a green uniform. The man was not acting — he was a real former Marine drill instructor and every bit of it came through on screen. The words, the delivery, the sheer relentless intensity of it. Even as an eleven year old you understood you were watching something completely different from anything you had ever seen.

Funny how a toy in a box at a car boot sale can take you straight back to a moment like that. Sitting between my dad and my brother, not fully understanding the film but completely gripped by it. Those afternoons watching movies together are some of my favourite memories.

The figure is sitting on my shelf now. Almost new, still brilliant, still terrifying. Every time I walk past it I half expect it to start yelling at me again.

Happy collecting — and remember, if you see something that makes you smile at a car boot sale, just buy it. You will not regret it.

Sharing my piece of Neverland…