daily prompt

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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Dashing

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Look at this beautiful thing: —. It is very different from this: –. It is also quite different from this: -.

I rarely employ the services of the second dash in my above list, as I am not in the business of cutting headstones. The en dash, called that because it measures the width of the lower-case n, is seen most frequently between dates: 1968–2075. (Those dates are mine; I intend to stick around for a while longer.) In the popular bumper-sticker expression, “Life is what you do with the dash between the dates on your headstone,” the “dash” is specifically an en dash. “Life is what you do with the en dash, a punctuation mark you didn’t know the name of but see all the time,” does not make for quite as inspiring a bumper sticker.

The hyphen, the third dash in my list? Well, I am a veritable hyphen sprinkler sometimes, with my frequent yoking together of terms into my own single-use modifiers. (Like there.)

The em dash and I are (don’t tell Jen) frequent companions, however.
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Magic! (Real Magic Not Included)

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I wanted the ultimate magic kit when I was a kid, but as with so many things in life, disappointment lay in the fact that the magic kits grew more complex, more “magical,” only with higher prices.

Each of them included a “magic wand,” which was just a wooden dowel painted black, or, in the more expensive kits, painted black with a white tip, because a white tip equals classy. The photo of the kid on the magic box with the white tipped wand often showed the kid in tails and with a top hat. (I am sure that because of kids like me, or because of just me, the toy companies needed to add the disclaimer, “Hat and tails not in package.”)
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