Creating an object with methods problem

[!NoItAll]

Ok - stuck on something I clearly don't understand well....

In the code below (which I just wrote here - it closely mirrors what my actual code is...) the problem is with the line:

Thing.ThingObject.Add(MyObject)

It says: "Object reference not set to an instance of an object"

Yes - it is "nothing" before I try to use the Add method so I must be doing something basic and wrong.
The object I am trying to add is fine - I can tell you it is correct, it's just that I apparently cannot use the .add method on the Thing.ThingObject until it is properly created - which I have apparently not done.
I'm hoping this is just a syntactical thing.....

 
Private Sub DoThing()
 
      Dim MyObject as New Object
 
      MyObject = MakeMyObject
 
      Dim Thing as New ListOfThings
 
      Thing.ThingObject.Add(MyObject)
 
End Sub
 
Partial Public Class ListOfThings
   Inherits Object
   Private vThingObject as ArrayOfThings
 
   Public Property ThingObject as ArrayOfThings
 
       Get
           return vThingObject
       End Get
       Set
            vThingObject = Value
       End Set
   End Property
 
End Class
 
Public Class ArrayOfThings
     Inherits System.Collections.Generic.List(of Objects)
End Class
 
 

[phvfl]

Hi,

You are creating an instance of the ListOfThings class - but the member vThingObject is not having an instance created. i.e. Thing is not nothing but Thing.ThingObject is nothing.

Assuming that ArrayOfThings has a parameterless constructor add the following to the ListOfThings class:

Public Sub New()
 vThingObject = New ArrayOfThings()
End Sub
 

[!NoItAll]

Yup - that was it. I found that, for simplicity, all I needed to do was to declare the private variable within the class with the NEW constructor.
Thanks phvfl!