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!