The Super Friends Poster

I'm out of my poster phase now. But in the 1990's and 2000's I obviously strongly felt that my comic sanctuary and work area should be covered wall-to-wall in super hero posters. Looking as much as possible like the inside of a comic book shop.

Now, in the new comic book sanctuary that we've recently built, I've only put up one poster. Lorie and I are both tired of little pin pricks all over the walls, and I'm being very picky about what gets displayed in the comic sanctuary. On one wall, my Aquaman fathead dominates the space. Given to me by pals Larry, Steve, and Scott for Christmas one year, the fathead is huge and the bright colors really pop on the deep brown walls of the room.





On the other side of the room, in the reading nook above the couch, we've mounted a poster frame. This is something that I can change out at will, choosing to display a new poster every month. So far, I've only ever kept one poster up. This one:


It only seems right. Showcasing the very basic elements of what started my lifelong passion with comics. A call back to my childhood and an era of comics that I'm still vastly in love with.

But there's another reason at play here. I had a similar poster as a kid. It was the only poster I had as a kid.

We moved a lot, as regular readers already know, and littering the walls with posters didn't really seem like a good idea. But when we lived in Texas, I remember eagerly ordering a Super Friends poster from the Scholastic Book club flyer passed out at school. I remember waiting an eternity for the poster to arrive, and I remember cutting out the picture of it from the Scholastic flyer and keeping it. I looked at that little picture quite a lot. And I remember putting the poster up on the wall when it finally arrived. I remember when we were packing up my toys and belongings for our next move. And I remember the poster getting torn when we took it down from the wall. I was crushed.

But see... memory is a tricky thing. And when I asked my mother to forward me a picture I knew she had of us reading a book under the poster, this is what she sent:


What? Several glaring inaccuracies spring up in the story I just told you.

First, that baby sitting in my lap is my baby sister Robyn. So this had to be in Plattsburgh, New York, 1978. Which means the poster didn't get ripped to the point of destruction in Texas as I had thought.

Second, there's more than one poster! See that! And that one over there! I remember those! I had completely forgotten those posters. Glorious remembrances of the 1970's versions of those characters. I would stare at those posters for quite awhile. They didn't make it past our next move, unless my mother can produce photographic evidence to prove me wrong.

Third, I'm wearing football pajamas. The Dallas Cowboys, if I'm not mistaken. This is the equivalent of Ashton constantly having to wear super hero pajamas growing up. If you had asked me yesterday if I had ever owned any football pajamas, I would have laughed at you and said "of course not". But here comes my mother... readjusting our expectations with photographic reality.

Fourth, my Mom is hot!

Fifth... that hair. What the heck? Holy Moley! I'm sporting the world's worst Prince Valiant cut. Was that punishment, Mom? What could I have done to earn such a badge of shame? Were we actively TRYING to make sure I was always identified as the weird kid? Was a crippling comic book obsession and loud love of Star Trek not enough to geek-ify me? Ugh.

My thirteen year old son, Ashton, thinks his hair cuts are terrible. Next time I'll arrange for an Air Force barber from the seventies to make this little masterpiece on top of his head.

Thanks,
DCD

How Moving Affected my Development

A few weeks back, I wrote a blog about moving and listed out the different places I've lived. Now, I've been living in the same house for over fifteen years and we're just moving into a house addition that we started six and a half years ago. Life is good.

My mother hit that blog and asked some questions. What did you use as an anchor? In each new environment did you have something that made it home? How did the transient lifestyle affect your development?

Actually, I think these questions say a lot about my mother. Think about that for a second. You've lived in a small town in North Carolina all your life and you've never really traveled that much. And then you marry into the Air Force and find yourself trying to establish a different building as a new 'home' every one to three years. That must have been tough for her. It was different for us kids, because we didn't really have the 'roots' that having a single childhood home can give a person. We never knew better.

But the questions are interesting. I do think it affected my development. I like for things to be in the proper place. No... you don't understand. I really really really like for them to be in the proper place. It's an obsession, really. When I bring something new into the house, I don't just set it on the kitchen table and leave it for some other time. I have to figure out at the VERY least which room it goes into. And when I visit someone, I have to carve out my 'place'. The chair I want to sit in and where my bag will go. I get nervous and uncomfortable if these decisions can't be made quickly. And I have to wonder if it's the OCD affecting me or if it has something to do with the 'transient lifestyle' of my childhood.

When I took my first job as a computer programmer, it was a huge leap for us. I had managed a Blockbuster Video and managed a temporary labor company, but this felt different. My first day as an actual professional. Well... they were not as ready for me as much as I was ready for them. They hadn't prepared a cube for me yet or gotten me a computer.

My new boss just asked me to leave my stuff in her office and help the Sys Admin move some furniture for the day. I was an internal mess. No place to be. No spot my own. No area to carve. I can't start building my own little systemic, OCD routines and processes if I don't even know where I'll be sitting. It was a very awkward first day to a brand new career.

That night... that very same night... my son was born. Three weeks early. TOTALLY leaving the plan in shambles. So my second day I called out. Not a stellar first week on the job for my good ol' brain and heart.

My anchors are just about what you would expect. Move as many times as you want, comics are sold everywhere. At least in the seventies they were. I do remember the frantic rush to figure out which channels were assigned to which TV stations at every new house. And the giddy joy that came with learning the local afternoon TV programming. The Archies and Popeye and Batman in New York. Starblazers, Spider-Man and Battle of the Planets in New Hampshire. People that lived here in Martinsburg all their lives always ask me about Ultraman and Speed Racer. Sorry, those shows didn't air in the areas where we lived. I never caught them.

I briefly touched on the marking of time in my moving blog. When you move every one to three years in your childhood, you begin to mark time based on what house you were living in when the event happened. Robyn was born when we lived in Plattsburgh, New York. My first Legion comic was in San Antonio, Texas. My first fist fight was in Fairfax, Virginia. My first pushing-on-the-playground incident was in Rochester, New Hampshire. First girlfriend was at summer camp at Hilltop, Pennsylvania.

Well, now that I've lived in the same house for fifteen years, I've seemed to lose the ability to mark time at all.

There were certain things I keep 'waiting' on with my oldest son. "When he's a teenager, I can expect this." - that sort of thing. He's thirteen! Teen-ager-dom has begun! When I turned thirteen, we had lived in twelve different houses. I keep waiting for some major 'thing' to happen that I can use to mark Ashton's next stage of development. As if the turning of birthdays wasn't enough. I have to keep logically comparing his development know to where I was at his age.

So yeah, the constant moving did affect my development, I think. And there's a part of me that keeps expecting a move again. But now that we've lived here for so long, made this house a home, stretched it out and then stretched into it, I just can't picture moving again for a very long time. If ever.


Thanks,
DCD