Memories

When You Grow Up

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

It was my least favorite question in school. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

On one occasion, I remember being forced (forced!) to draw (draw!) what my life would look like … in … the … few … cher-er-er. (Echoes.) If I had had the sense of humor I now claim to have, I would have drawn someone who was capable of drawing. Maybe I would have drawn someone holding a board with many colors on it. The person would be wearing a smock. And a beret. (That was how Mr. V—, our art teacher in elementary school, actually dressed. It was almost a parody of a cliché of someone’s parodied cliché of what an artist is supposed to look like.) The caption to my drawing would have stated that I hoped I would be able to draw when I was a grown-up.
Read More

The Time That I …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The ludicrous amount of paperwork is what saved us. Or the fact that it is possible that no one at the train yard had ever created the documents that would have been needed to handle the situation, or no one would have been able to find them if they had been created. That is what spared us.

We were up to no good, but in a harmless way, so no harm had been done by definition, so nothing was done about us the night I stole a train.
Read More

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.
Read More