My wife would tell you that my fascination with fantasy baseball makes me a true-blue nerd. And yes, I do spend a lot of time playing a type of fantasy baseball that is well beyond what you amateurs are into. This involves taking players throughout history and pitting them against each other in simulated games. You choose 1969 Harmon Killebrew and 1921 Babe Ruth and 1987 Keith Comstock and so on, a bunch of other people pick who they want, and then you assemble leagues and let the computer simulate entire seasons, game by game. Regular fantasy baseball was just the gateway -- this is the hard stuff.
But I can quit any time. I have it under control. What I'm really a nerd for is my wife and kid. I would definitely go to a Erin and Eleanor Dykhuizen convention if someone would just start one already. (Neither of my senators have responded to me about this idea.)
When I was a kid, though, I was definitely a nerd, for "Star Wars." The insane fervor that I would later bring to my pursuit of a girlfriend was then applied to ensconcing myself in the "Star Wars" universe.
I was especially fascinated by the "Star Wars" action figures. I lusted for every single figure, for every vehicle, for every playset or beast or napkin that George Lucas spit on or whatever else -- I had to have them all. I would spend blissful hours gazing trancelike at the backs of the toy packages, where they showed pictures of all the available figures. As I marveled at the folds in the Gamorrean Guard's tunic or the odd spots on Boba Fett's uniform, these cheap pieces of plastic became like holy relics, ones that allowed me to touch for a moment the world I desperately wanted to be in. When, several years after "Return if the Jedi" had been released, other kids moved on to G.I. Joe or He-Man or Transformers, I remained steadfastly loyal to "Star Wars," and would not dare betray it for a second to even glance at any of those other toys. (Although, in weaker moments, Transformers did tempt me ...)
By the time puberty hit, (and hit pretty goddamn hard), the "Star Wars" figures were mostly set aside in favor of baseball and hopeless dreams about girls. But most of my adolescence was spent alone in my room, so occasionally, for lack of anything better to do, I'd bring out the figures again. Usually in odd contexts, though.
For example, I fell in love with rap group Public Enemy in ninth grade. Nothing took my away from my sad and frustrating life better than sitting alone in my room and listening to "Fear of Black Planet" on my Walkman (never out loud -- I definitely didn't want my mom to hear it).
But sitting and listening to this music didn't leave much for my hands to do. And I wanted a sort of visual aspect to the experience. So I would make my Ewok figurines act out the raps. I believe Chuck D was played by Logray (Ewok Medicine Man) and Flavor Flav was played by Chief Chirpa. Later I realized that my Ewok stuffed animals were better able to make the many emphatic hand gestures I imagined that Chuck D and Flavor Flav were making, so they took over. I tell you, righteous indignation over racial injustice had never looked so adorable.
At one point in college I did bring a bunch of my "Star Wars" stuff into my dorm room, clearly because I felt I was doing too well with the ladies and needed to scare off a few. I even put my old Star Wars sheets on my bed. I thought I was being kitschy, but I'm sure I was regressing on some level. If a woman had ever been coaxed into that bed, I'm not sure she would have stayed.
The next time I revisited the "Star Wars" toys was after I got laid off from my first real job, about three years after college. I suddenly had a lot of time to kill, was in kind of a depressive state, and worst of all, I had some money to burn. eBay smelled an opportunity and pounced.
On eBay, I could get the figures and playsets I had never managed to get my hands on as a kid. I looked at that stuff online and longed to get that feeling back, that feeling of bliss and contentment and escape that I experienced when I gazed at those toys as a kid. Even if it didn't feel like that now that I was an adult, maybe I could at least achieve a pale imitation. That sounded better than what I was doing at the time, which was very little.
One night after a having a few too many beers, I was on eBay (stories that start this way never end well). I found a auction in which a guy was selling his whole collection, a massive set full of figures and playsets and even many things still in their packaging. Oh my God, I thought. This is how I can make a little extra money. I can buy collections, break them down into individual toys, sell those toys individually, and then ... millionaire.
I paid $3000 for this guy's entire collection. After it came to my apartment in two massive boxes, I had a grand old time sifting through it all, taking inventory, estimating the values, etc. I started by putting on eBay a few of the AT-STs (Imperial vehicles often colloquially known as "chicken walkers" that had a major role in the battle on Endor, though they were originally released as toys after "Empire Strikes Back," because the battle on Hoth had a very brief, almost gratuitous scene where ... I'm losing you, aren't I. Sorry. Back to the story.)
I watched my auctions with bated breath and ... did not get one bid. I tried a couple of other auctions and got the same result. What I neglected to investigate before launching this future Fortune 500 business of mine is that eBay is packed to the gills with this stuff. And often they're sold by licensed dealers that people can trust. I didn't stand a chance.
I did find a major dealer that I was interested in some of it. This guy lived in a McMansion on the coast of the St. Croix River in Wisconsin, and had a huge warehouse of old "Star Wars" stuff. I drove down there with a bunch of stuff still in its original packaging and got maybe $1500.
So I was still $1500 in the hole, with a bunch of toys I'd have a terrible time trying to unload. So much for my brilliant get-rich-slow scheme. I stuck it all in a closet.
Only recently did I get intrigued again. Now that we have a house, I would like to put this stuff on display. At this point, I'm happily married and I don't give a fiddler's fart what people think, so why not? These ugly little things with bizarrely shaped guns still carry a lot of nostalgia for me. For better or for worse, they're woven into my psyche -- I still have anxiety dreams about losing them.
So this is what I've done so far:
Yeah, baby. Jealous? That's almost all the figures from the original lines, released from 1977-1985. The gaps at the bottom are for the figures I don't own -- only 5 of the 95. Not all are complete with their guns and capes and what have you, but most are. I painstakingly wired them all into place, at my wife's recommendation, and even wired most of their guns into their hands. (Those goddamn little guns drive me to distraction -- they seem to be designed to disappear into carpets and get vacuumed up.)
The idea of this is to mimic that back of the toy package that I would gaze at so lovingly:
My creation arranges them in exactly the same order, with a few exceptions. You see, the "Return of the Jedi" and "Power of the Force" card backs would exclude the original versions of C3PO and R2D2 -- what you see in the above is "C3PO with removable limbs" and "R2D2 with lightsaber," whereas the original versions released in 1978 had ... and I'm losing you again. Sorry.
Anyway. I don't know what my point is with all this. I suppose it's just that when you get old and contented, you get to indulge in silly nostalgia, turning the things you loved as a kid into sacred relics. Then your kids can look at them politely, nod at your boring stories about them, and as soon as you die, they can throw them in the trash. Such is life. The end.
No comments:
Post a Comment