Remembering seeing the world as an eight year old is a spotty act of creativity. Some things are blurry. Others are very clear. And other things?
You can’t tell if they’re out of place or just so weird you made them up.
When I was eight, I was a rebel. I wanted to try new things. I wanted to mix it up.
I loved combinations.
So I got myself a combination blender. You know, those blenders but without buttons.
They have a big old numbered dial onto them.
The world famous combination blenders of East Ship Harbour.
They’re so simple to use:
Three turns to the left, two to the right, then?
Milkshake!
We had great things when we were kids. Robots that happen to be cars and cars that happen to be robots?
Is it a car or is it a robot?
Who could tell?
It was enough to make us all paranoid.
Or is it just me?
The car robots motto? “More than meets the eye”.
The impact on us?
Trust no one. Believe in nothing.
And the TV show? All of was just an ad.
Sure,
It was all just a way for Hasbro to push post apocalyptic Japanese nihilism on un suspecting teen age boys around the globe.
And you wonder why there are so many conspiracy theories these days. The logic is simple:
That car might be a truck and that truck might be a butler who happens to be a robot who’s controlled by an evil ultra secret cabal of baby eating lizard people.
It’s confusing times - especially if you’re just a bit clever. Clever enough to follow seventeen podcasts and to see all of the interconnected fabric between what they’re saying, but not clever enough to realize that you know nothing.
Each period has it’s own label and ethos. There was the age of sail, the Industrial Revolution, the renaissance.
If I had to define the particular epoch we’re living in I’d say that we live in the time of the spork.
That’s such a terrible word. Spork.
Spork. Dork, Sexy+Dork = Spork?
Or
Does Stinky+Pork = Spork?
I’m asking a lot of you right now - this question surrounding sporks is a deeply painful one for some.
We really should just let God decide. It’s only right.
Seriously though,
Could you imagine a talking spork?
He’d be all like: “Look at me. I’m confused”.
I’d be all like bullying him and stuff: “Hey, Short prongs, that’s quite the bowl belly you’ve got.”
They’d have to bring in HR to intervene. I’d get written up for questioning what course of meal you eat it with.
We should give all the weirdos a mark. A spork mark. Like branding cattle but you do it with a spork. It wouldn’t work though. So many sporks are totally plastic.
But if you could, you know, give people the spork mark, It would save a lot of time. Right?
Wouldn’t it be nice to have an easy way to identify those spork people.
The confused and the clueless. You know the kind. The spork people are the kind of folks you invite over to your place for a party and they don’t ever get the hints that it’s time for them to leave and you to sleep.
I had a spork person once a few years ago who came over for an afternoon wine and cheese.
And now, he’s been here so long, we use him as a place to leave the clothes that we’re going to wear just one more time before putting them in the wash.
More and more spork people are becoming fashionable. That’s how you can tell an up an coming spork person. They’re fashionable. They wear a mullet.
Sporks and mullets are natural allies. In Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, pairing a spork person with a mullet gives you a +3 defense modifier.
But these are the cynical ranting of a 53 year old man.
As an eight year old boy?
I was mystified by the inventive genius of the spork, thought mullets were the most bossest of hair cuts and the ultimate car was the Chevy El Camino.
The El Camino to be the ultimate car? truck? An El Camino is like having a mullet, face tattoos and those odd stretched ear things all dressed up in a plaid and beige ensemble entirely from the pages of the LL Bean catalogue.
What does the El Camino say about a man?
Rugged woodland urban weirdo?
Hipster, dipstick, wannabe dweebe?
Add a mullet and then all you’d need are a bunch of those hockey puck skin stretcher things.
You remember those people?
You know those people. You know, the ones who would stuff hockey pucks in their earlobes until their lobes are stretched out so bad they resemble what would happen to a sad withered yellow balloon that was passed around in every glory hole in rural Quebec.
Skin stretching isn’t my jam. Piercings aren’t my jam.
I once dated a chick with her belly button pierced. It was awful. She was deranged.
If you have your belly button pierced? You are a sick individual. You are a horrible person. You are deranged.
This deranged monster that I used to date, you know, that one with an abomination on her belly button?
She thought it would be funny if she stretched out that hole with the hockey puck skin stretchers earlobe widening thingies.
You know what I mean…
She was an odd duck. Never before in my lifetime had I ever met a woman who volunteered for the joys of stretching and tearing out her guts for no apparent reason. I mean, it wasn’t like she was becoming a mom. At least as a mom you end up with some cheap labor for the family based influencer sweatshop that’s your side hustle.(Your girls are GREAT little dancers! You must be SO PROUD!)
Could you imagine if the belly button stretching lady dated another sickoo who put those earlobe stretchers in a belly button ring?
Every time they had sex it would be like to little castanettes tapping together.
When they were doin’ it, they’d have to leave the plates in.
Without those spacers, things would become a stringy mess.
It would be like that scene in Lady and the Tramp with the spaghetti, but instead of a meatball, a giant glob of belly button lint would come rolling out like a stringy starched piece of polyester tumbleweed.
If they sized up and found bigger hole stretchers?
Well. Then they’d sound like really loud castanets. The size would make them louder. So they would be louder.
That’s just how she goes.
I’m glad that I was eight at the time I was eight. It was the beginning of the eighties. Regan was about to sweep into the White House.
The best part of Regan? He had no impact on my life at all. I’m Canadian, he was just some guy.
But the 80’s were great.
The 80’s were great because the teenagers?
They didn’t stretch their earlobes.
They had dirt bikes and motor boats.
Teens back then had adventures.
Thinking back to my eight year old self. I dreamt I was another boy. He was the teen in the boat of my dreams.
The teen in the boat of my dreams was my first crush.
I didn’t love his hair, nor the deck of Players Light that he had tucked up the sleeve of his white cotton undershirt.
I was in love with is boat.
I loved his boat because that boat of his, that fourteen foot long aluminum boat with a little 9.9 allowed this young stallion to go ANYWHERE and EVERYWHERE on the lake and be able to SEE ALL THE THINGS.
JIMMY SEEING ALL THE THINGS: Oh look, there’s a tree. Oh! And another tree. And oh wow! A tree. Oh look a tree! Oh, and another tree. And oh wow! A tree. Oh look, a tree!
That’s not how I imagined it though. I imagined old hunting logs with muskets and gold mines and trolls!
Not really ‘trolls’ per se, but old stinky guys who basically lived in a swamp.
I wouldn’t live in a swamp though. In my dream, I’d live in my boat. I’d go wherever I wanted - just like that guy.
The lake is twelve miles long. It gets rough in a hurry.
But when you start exploring from a young age, the rough stuff doesn’t upset you that much.
I think what I love best about being a guide and tour director.
People come to me like that eight year old boy that I used to be. They come to me with dreams - dreams to see. Dreams to explore. Dreams to imagine.
They’re here to take a peak at what’s just around the corner.
They’re here to catch a glimpse of something they’ve never seen before .
And me?
I’m that fourteen foot aluminum boat.
Oh look, a tree! Oh look, another tree!
