Holidays

A Toy Story

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

My lust for toys went through phases when I was a kid, from action dolls to Matchbox cars to magic kits to a brief fling with fully functioning model trains, to video games.

The most “useful” action doll was “Stretch Armstrong,” which was the one doll that lived up to its name and moved just like the cartoon character. It stretched. Thus, it was “realistic.” One of my friends had one of these. The least useful was the “bionic man” Steve Austin doll, which was easily broken yet completely indestructible. His bionic eye was not a telescope but instead a simple hole drilled through his head with a glass tube inserted. The tube was cloudy with dust within months or minutes of opening the doll’s box. Thus, it was “real” as opposed to “realistic.” And that of course was the doll I owned.
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‘Who Killed the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In a couple of hours, we will be pumpkin hunting, my girlfriend and I. They call it “pumpkin picking” for some reason, but the only “picking” that will be happening will be me pointing at a nominee and my girlfriend either shaking her head no or collecting it for us.

Like many other activities, I have not gone pumpkin collecting since childhood, a period of my life that I mostly wasted in an 18-year-long wish for it to be over. (Instead, I lingered in it and that all ended in 2010.)

My girlfriend discovered last year that she has a talent for carving the jacks o’lantern. In a remarkable coincidence, I re-established at around the same hour that I possess no such talents, that the pumpkins and I have no rapport. My sole attempt last year, my one try at even producing a traditional (in America, in the 1970s) triangle-eyed and two-toothed smile (three teeth if ambitious; see above), was hindered by my lack of patience. I would have had more of what we like to call success if I’d set out from the beginning to carve the sucker with my two thumbnails and my deep need to weep at panic boredom.
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Love in the Parts & Service Department

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

[This was originally posted in November 2013.]

Today at a car dealer I saw the sharpest and softest demonstration of love.

My friend, L——, and I were waiting for her car to be serviced, so we sat in the waiting room to discuss the things good friends discuss in waiting rooms.
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