(Burial) Plot

May 9, 1978

Spakros, who will later go on to create the Internet, Furbies, environmentally friendly fuel sources (water, urine), and who will bed seven members of Girls' Generation*, is born. Dr. Manhattan decides to return to Earth from Mars.

Sometime in 1979

My mother puts a purple, paisley teddy bear in my crib. Horrified, I toss the bear out of the crib, onto the floor. My mother puts it back in, because I can't speak yet and tell her not to. Yes, my first memory comes from the crib, before I could walk or talk. You think I'm lying, I know; but that's what happened. I can't remember the plot of Miller's Crossing or what I ate for breakfast this past Sunday, but I remember that. Vividly.

Other Foggy Dates That Ushered My Infanthood into Childhood

- Watching a double feature of Star Wars and Empire at two years old. Yoda scared the piss out of me until Frank Oz, the voice of Grover, spoke, soothing me like a warm blanket. Other cinematic half-memories include Gremlins (Phoebe Cates almost ruined Christmas, but I must have been too busy staring at her doe eyes to comprehend the weight of her words**), Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Bambi, and The Secret of Nimh. They sure don't make em like they used to.

- Cabbage Patch Kids. They had signatures on their asses like Asians have Mongolian spots! I received one as a grading present***, only the boy Cabbage Patch Kids were all sold out, so I got a girl instead. Her name was Elvira. Surprisingly, this didn't turn me into a homosexual. Quite the opposite: I like to think it made me understand women better. In fact I know it did.

- Pac-Man. I can empathize to a certain extent with North Koreans, brainwashed cult followers, and fans of the Wu-Tang Clan, because if anyone ever calls Pac-Man anything except for the greatest video game ever made, he or she will require a tetanus shot. Because I just bit him/her. Hard. I will defend Pac-Man as the best video game ever created until I die (Thursday, December 24, 2009, at 9:13 PM).

- Cake. I hate cake. Why? I have some theories. Everything for a toddler is about cake: when it will come next, what kind of frosting it will have. Cake babies. Cake is to kids what crack is to fiends****, their methods of intake different but sharing the same result. Cake makes kids high. It's a drug for children. I'm only half-joking here; cake is dangerous. It incites microcosmic riots. It's a bad drug. I could go on*****.

- Mr. Rogers/Mr. Dressup/Fraggle Rock. (Word to Casey and Finnegan.) Fueled by a contact high in their genetics (and possibly cake), kids of my generation were raised with creative programming. The 70's zeitgeist of imaginative freedom for old and young would soon fall under the Cold War Curtain of the 80's (and Dallas, and cocaine), but it lingered, and I was there; and I fucking witnessed its transcendence. Soon I would be too busy worrying about naked women to care; but it was, to paraphrase the great Charles Dickens, a fucking blast.

There was a time when my biggest concern was whether the piece of candy I swallowed whole would kill me (my mother assured me it wouldn't, then made me drink hot water to melt the candy when I didn't believe her). Then came life.

This is mine.

With guitars. In stereo surround and close-captioning for the hearing impaired.




* at the same time!

** If there's any justice on this orb, Ms. Cates will read this and be thankful that I may be one of the few straight men alive to mention her and not reference her nude scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Until she reads this footnote, that is.

*** For graduating from kindergarten. Way to set the bar low, Baby Boomers.

**** I plagiarized that from the SAT analogy section

***** Cake is the de facto term for illicit products, especially drugs; and there's a reason for it. Because cake is a narcotic. Cake will lead to the collapse of mankind. Of this I am seventy-two percent sure.