WEEKEND OPEN BAR: dick in a box
[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]
Once again our intrepid heroes are out there fighting the good fight. So while Caff and Rendar are ingratiating themselves with the folks at Comicon, why don’t we have a chat. Pull up a chair, its story time.
Death is all around you. It will take you at some point. When you are a child, you don’t know this. Hell, if you did, you probably wouldn’t care all that much. Death doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It simply is a transition. I’m sorry about getting all philosophical on you. I always get this way around my birthday. Also, I’ve had a few. So, depending on when you read this, it may in fact be my birthday. I suppose that’s true of any article I write. Well, if its Saturday, October 13th, then feel free to send along your birthday well wishes (Cheap Pop). I’m not going to tell you all how old I am as that may kill any cool vibes I may have garnered, however I will say that it is the one year anniversary of my 30th birthday.
Sorry for my digression, lets move on to this week’s Open Bar topic. When did your childhood die?
Let me add a bit of perspective. When you are a child, you have your perception of how the world works. Specifically with you at the center, and everyone trying to please you like you’re Caligula. However, in most cases, there is a world event that occurs that kind of snaps you out of this fantasy. You start to see the world as a large organism that you are a part of rather than background noise. As you slowly realize that if you disappeared, nothing would change on the large scale. You then find yourself wondering what your place is in the world as opposed to wondering how the world would shape itself around you. When you start to question your place in the world, your childhood is dead.
So, what global event killed your childhood?
—-
For me, it was April 22, 1994. Folks might know that as the day Nixon died. It was a Friday. I didn’t know it then, but my childhood had one more weekend to enjoy itself. One more respite to bask in the carefree revelry that is a 13-year-old’s every day. Monday when I returned to school, our homeroom teachers explained to us what had happened the previous week. I had no idea. They didn’t mention much about Nixon’s death during my cartoons or even reruns of Saved by the Bell. How was I to know what had occurred?
We were then marched into the Barry Auditorium, the OLD Barry Auditorium. Veterens of MMS know it well. It was musty, the seats were small and hard, there was chewing gum on everything, and the back every chair had its own mosaic of graffiti. There was a presentation. We were show pictures and video of the man. This was the first time a former president had died in my lifetime. As far as I knew, no former president had EVER died. Sure, some of them were dead, but I wasn’t around to confirm it.
At that moment I started to feel something. No, it wasn’t my pubescent body reacting to the freshly shampooed hair of the girl in front of me. At least I don’t think it was. I started to get this feeling that nothing I had done mattered. Sure, I was 13, what could I have done to make an impact? I was a hell of a baseball player back then. Maybe that was enough to carry on my legacy. Nixon served as vice President under Eisenhower. Ok, I got one. I could ride my bike REALLY fast. Nixon opened up relations with China. Damn. I did have a fair hand with LEGOs, perhaps that was my window into immortality. Nixon won the presidency in the largest landslide in history claiming 49 of the 50 states. Foiled again.
Nixon had won the day despite being dead. However I then realized something. The book on Nixon had been written cover to cover. There would be no more entries in his book. I on the other hand had barely finished my forward, merely in the first few lines of my preamble. Perhaps I could best Nixon after all.
Its been 18 years since then. Nixon is still winning. That bastard!
—
I was too young to appreciate the first Iraq war, 9/11 happened when I was 20, and Oklahoma City was still explosion free. Nixon’s death may have just lined up with a natural occurring transition, but how would we know otherwise? So I ask again; What global event snapped you out of your childlike fancy and put you on the path to adulthood?