It's the milage!

As Indiana Jones once said, “It’s not the years; it’s the mileage.” My body is older but my mind hasn’t aged a day over twelve. That sounds bad; so, let’s say seventeen. Yeah, that still sounds bad too. Let’s say, I have the wisdom of a middle age man but have the sensibilities of that young teenager. I still get excited to run to the comic shop. I sill lay in the floor to flip the pages of a Teen Titan comic. (It’s the getting back up that’s hard.) I run to the toy isle first, before buying groceries at Wal-Mart. I pretend to be Jedi when the automatic doors open at the Target. And I relive Saturday Mornings by watching my Challenge of the Super Friends DVDs. It was life’s adventure that wore my body down not the passage of time.

“I’m a Toys R Us kid and I refuse to grow up.” I refuse to grow up if it means I can not relish the joy I had when I wore a Fireman’s helmet and rode along with the guys in Emergency 51, or when I ran in slow motion singing nah, nah, nah na na na, or pretended my bike was an self-aware vehicle like KITT on Knight Rider, or using a ruler in substitution of a Stormtrooper blaster, or swinging Grandma’s yard stick as my Katana sword against Storm Shadow.

Every December my mother attended a Shoe Show Convention in Albuquerque. It was an exciting time. It usually meant that my Grandmother would drive to Roswell to watch me for a few days. But that years, Grandma couldn’t make it. So I stayed with my Mother’s friend Donna. I recall not being too excited about staying with Donna. She felt more like a stranger than family. She had a small apartment and I slept on the couch. Yet, it was that seventh birthday week when I first peeked at a Playboy because Donna’s boyfriend happened to have a coffee table filled with them. He invited her over for a small gathering of friends at a BBQ. Sneaking glances as the adults walked into the kitchen or onto the patio. I opened it up; right to the staples. The odor of newsprint and cheap cologne samples. I remember feeling naughty and confused. I just remember the big dark patch of hair below Ms. November’s tummy. It was the ‘70s after all. Fur was in!

When my mother returned to pick me up I ran into her arms. I exclaimed, “what did you get me!?” She pulled the Toys R Us bag from her purse. Toys R Us had the really cool toys. Roswell, being the tiny hole in the dessert it was, had no cool super toy stores, only the pathetic toy aisle at K-mart and ALCO. I reached into the bag and pulled out the Kenner Micro Collection Darth Vader Tie Interceptor! It was freaking awesome. The wings pulled off, and the back opened to show a tiny Darth Vader seated in the cockpit. I had never seen such a toy before in person. Toys R Us had the toys that I could only dream about in the Sears Wish List Catalog. (I still have the tiny tie fighter in a box in the garage.)

The last Shoe Show that my Mother would attend would be when I was a Sophomore in High School. I recall asking her if she was going to stop by the Toys R Us. She said I was too old for Toys R Us. I said, no I’m not! I refuse to grow up!

TRON, Not in my Pants!

Twenty Eight years ago, a movie debuted with cutting edge computer graphics, unique filmmaking and centered around an alternative computer generated world. Long before The Matrix, TRON did it first! Now, after so many years, the invention of the internet, handheld digital music devices, e-readers and tiny mobile computers (ala iPhone), we get the TRON sequel. Like 1982, the toys are in stores, video games retell the story and everywhere you turn there’s some kind of TRON promotion. Now, I remember the original. I remember the day I sat in the theater watching the kick-ass special effects. I saw it at the Plains Park Twin Theater by the ALCO. It was within a bikes ride of our apartment. It was the new theater, being built in 1980 or so. I watched them build it. The babysitter’s son and I rode our bikes to the site and threw rocks into the wet cement of the sidewalk. When the contractor came around and caught us hovering over the pebble strewn section, we swore it was some kids on skate boards and we chased them off. He believed us and we talked and watched him fix it. We asked if we could put our initials in the soft concrete and he politely denied us the opportunity.

Actually, the first movie I ever saw at that theater was The Fox and the Hound. My mother and I went on a Sunday afternoon and found that it was sold out. We asked about the next showing and it was sold out. We returned the following weekend to find it also sold out. After weeks of trying, we finally got in and saw it.

If memory serves correct, I think a group of friends and I rode our bikes to the theater on a hot July day and watched TRON at a matinee screening. After the movie, we rode over to ALCO. It was that fateful day that we all got caught stealing TRON figures. The guys took several figures over to the garden center and began opening them and putting them down their pants. For the record, I personally never opened any nor physically put any of the figures down my pants. Yet, when a diligent employee spotted us, ran to our location and shouted for us to freeze, the guys ran. Except me. They hopped on their bikes and were gone. Except me. I stood there. Why? I don’t recall. I don’t know if I was a deer in headlights or figured I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. The only problem was my ten year old mind wasn’t aware of a little legal vernacular called “accessory” to said crime. They took me in the back and called my mother. She had to come down to the store and oversee me home. The few things I remember after that was her loading my bike into the back of the car, the silent car ride home and the lonely time spent in my room. I don’t think I got into any real trouble from the store as we really hadn’t stolen anything. Outside of opening merchandise, none of us made it out of the store with any toys. Because when the employee spotted us, everyone ditched the figures under bags of fertilizer and ran. I remember this as the manager had all the toys in the office when my mother arrived. It’s sad really that I have such a bad memory along with such good memories of TRON. (for karma, I bought several of those figures in the weeks following the event.)

For the good memories, that was riding our bikes over to Kathy’s Arcade and spending a week’s allowance of $2 into the TRON arcade game. The Light Cycles was my favorite and the hardest. Shooting the spiders with Tron’s arm was the dreaded part. I think that game stayed at Kathy’s, along with the Star Wars Death Star Trench Run, until Junior High.

To think I was ten when the original debuted and now 38 when its sequel will premiere. Yet, I still feel like that ten year old and that’s the best part!

My Grandmother

The first week of December always reminds me of my grandmother. Her birthday is December First. We shared December birthdays; and when hers came around, I knew mine wasn’t too far off. December birthdays aren’t the greatest as Christmas is right around the corner and usually celebrations get overlooked in the hectic rush of holiday shopping and decorating. Yet, I never minded. I can luckily state: I never got a crappy birthday gift. It actually made December an exciting time in my childhood. From Thanksgiving to New Years were always happy times. Yesterday got me really thinking of my grandmother and how I miss her. She was a second mother as she practically raised me alongside my hard-working single mother. I didn’t have two sets of grandparents like most kids. And I didn’t mind. It was just Grandmother. Grandfather had died in 1966; long before I was born. Yet, I often stared at his photo on our dining room cabinet and Grandmother’s bookcase. They would tell me stories of how he was a gruff ex-Navy man and was very old school strict and disciplined. I definitely wish I could have met him or talked with him. There were the stories of how he went to the neighbors house with a rifle, told the man if his dog chased my 7 year old mother to school again, he’d shoot it! Or the time, when he was displeased with how my mother, uncle and aunt washed the supper dishes, he made them wash every dish in the house, emptying out cupboards and the china cabinet. From that moment, they never did that chore half-assed again. I felt sorry for Grandmother as I think she missed him terribly. Yet, she was not some tea sipping granny either. She managed rental properties; she pumped her own gas; she went to the Sears to haggle over a washer; she went to church every Sunday in a 1966 green Rambler; she went to the newsstand every week to buy my comics; she watered and mowed her own lawn; and, she had an opinion when provoked. I remember when I bought my first suit in High School. It was one of those hip Miami Vice inspired suits that was an olive green and had the waist jacket that crossed in the front. She looked right at me and said, “the color looks like baby shit.” I think that was the first time I heard her cuss. I was shocked I didn’t know whether to be discouraged or laugh out loud. I respected her opinion that day but I still bought the suit. I even got my Senior Pictures done in it! I should have kept it just for that memory. Most of my memories of Grandmother are her clipping coupons on Sunday morning; me reading comics in the floor with her oscillating fan blowing on me; her taking me to TG&Y to buy a Star Wars figure and her shock that they cost $2.49 each. She would exclaim, “highway robbery!!” But she still bought them and took the time to ask if I was missing any ones I wanted. She was a great grandmother. She was my Grandmother. She died in 1999, just months before the birth of my daughter. I miss you. And I love you, Grandma!