Yes, after a long time off, I have a new entry for the Gallery of Awesomeness!
In the early 70’s I was a kid in elementary school, living in a small town with one traffic light in NY. My best friend was my older cousin Dave, and he and I waged all kinds of battles with our 12 inch tall GI Joe action figures. They were our entertainment. GI Joe underwent a transformation at some point because war toys fell out of favor when Americans started seeing too many body bags coming back in cargo planes from a war half the country thought was stupid, so they became the “Action Team.” Action apparently meant digging up mummies of children and fighting sharks under the sea, because, ya know, somebody had to.
But for us it meant shooting matches between the good guys and the bad guys. And those teams were made up of vikings, cowboys, knights, soldiers, whatever action figures we had.
One Easter, my cousin and I were staying with our grandparents in Corning, NY (which was and is a beautiful place) and we ended up getting this GI Joe set from our grandparents. To say we were happy is to say the Atlantic Ocean is a pond. We were thrilled beyond belief. We both agreed recently that the GI Joe Easter was our best Easter ever.
For my 50th birthday, my cousin bought me the set again. Now it lives on my bookshelf at work. Here he’s helping Batman decorate:
So let’s get to our analysis.
You can see in the featured image for this post that at this point in time, GI Joe was still an “action soldier” and had the appropriate machine gun for the job. To me, the guy in the artwork looks more like Spenser For Hire than GI Joe. Nothing says covert like a bright gold machine gun. Or for that matter, bright red binoculars. Those won’t stand out at all in the bushes. We also have some dynamite and a detonator (which is labeled “DETONATOR” in all caps because apparently Joe was an idiot. The telecom gear was pretty damn cool, though, as was the gas mask, which I don’t even remember. The raft made plenty of journeys across the vastness of my bathtub, I recall. And the flare gun became a “real gun” when you lost the submachine gun, naturally.
Oh the wonderful memories. This stuff was the most joyful and important stuff in my life when I was 7 or 8. We had so much fun. As a trained educator, I can tell you that no one should ever underestimate the value of playing, of using your imagination, whether you’re 8 or 80. These days I play guitar. My guitars don’t have wars with each other, but some of the creativity I’ve used in my life certainly came from my early memories of using my imagination. When I was a little older, my dad won a writing contest with a great short story (which I later turned into a song.) It’s not a coincidence that I like to write. Not sure if it’s genetics or just watching him do it that inspired me (probably both), but this site is my outlet for writing. Over the past 7 years more than a quarter of a million people have visited the site. Sort of makes me think I should do a better job with my edits. Ha ha ha! If only my high school english teachers could see me now. Memory Lane is a fine place to visit, every once in a while.
