Rubber Monsters and the End of Innocence

When I was a little kid, I used to collect and play with rubber monsters. I don't even know if they make those anymore. I'm not talking about the plastic ones, or the ones that are made from "hard" rubber. I'm talking about a specific type of rubber that was used to make all sorts of weird critters. It was soft, pliable and sort of spongy. I had flies, snakes, turtles, bats, spiders, frogs, a gorilla, aliens, crocodiles and alligators, mutants, ants, a scorpion and a crab. I'd find them in local dime stores in a big bin full of similar toys, or at supermarkets in those dime machines where you get a monster in a clear plastic capsule. I'm not sure they have those anymore either.

I'd construct elaborate, ongoing storylines with these creatures. Some of them were good and some were evil. I guess my "story" was sort of like the "Transformers" saga in that some of these creatures protected mankind and some of them sought to destroy it. They would interact with army men and toys from other mediums like "Star Wars" and "Micronauts". I remember I froze some of my monsters in a dixie cup full of water in the freezer (pre "Return of the Jedi", mind you). I would occasionally drop them in my mom's dishwater and watch in devilish glee when she "found" them. I played with them inside in the winter and outside in the summer. They were shot, electrocuted, frozen, crushed, impaled, and buried in sand. They suffered all the expected tortures at the hands of a little kid with a wild imagination in the 1970s.

It's been a long time since I thought about those toys. Oddly enough, I was reminded of them while watching a news broadcast about a woman who had gone missing and had been employed as an escort. Someone who was interviewed said that the woman worked so hard for her children, and tried to give them a good life. That reminded me of the children of some of my friends, and I thought about how hard it must be to keep kids happy today. Kids are plugged into video games and all manner of digital media at such a young age; I can only imagine how they would react to getting a bunch of rubber monsters as a present. How on earth could a sticky rubber spider compete with a fully realized, complex computerized world full of state of the art graphics and a wide array of functions and options?

I began to feel immeasurably old and out of touch. How do you explain to kids the wonder of a toy that seems so archaic? It's like trying to extoll the virtures of a paper airplane to a fighter pilot. It's as if time has moved past and eliminated whatever purpose the original device once had. The current generation is just so used to its level of engagement it can't imagine anyone being satisfied with something so prehistoric.

It's not their fault, of course. It's all environment. I can't imagine a time when there was no television , but my parents could, and did. They survived. They listened to radio and went to the movies. They used cardboard boxes for "forts" and sticks for guns while playing "cowboys and Indians". Their toys didn't do much on their own so they had to use their imagination to enable the wonders they held within. Nothing was electronic or had fifty pieces to assemble or was patterned after the likeness of Harrison Ford. Each generation progresses (or changes at least) and each successive group seems to have trouble relating to the ones that it followed. The cycle repeats itself.

It does make one pause, though, to consider the implications of this. If today's kids are plugged into ultra real games and toys that require less and less personal creativity to enjoy, what on earth will succeeding generations find meaningful diversion? Will we all be running around in virtual reality arenas like the "Star Trek" holodecks, where all we have to do to visualize something is to program it into a computer, and then experience it? With toys and games becoming more and more "real", what will be the inspiration for future? What will fire the creative juices of the children of the future if everything they experience in their leisure time requires so little of them? Isn't there a danger in having diversions that simply "happen" to you and don't require any kind of personal input?

But all the computer games have options, you say. They are not totally passive; you construct your own models from a huge array of preprogrammed choices. True enough. But even these choices, numerous as they are, are finite and worse, constructed by someone else. A kid that picks up a video game and has a thousand types of powers he can adopt for his character is still more limited than the kid who picks up a stick and it limited only by his own imagination. The character can be almost anything, but the stick can be anything.

I'm not lobbying for a ban on computer chips or CGI graphics. I love the look and feel of all these modern games and toys, too. I just think with entertainment, as with every facet of life that's changed by technology, it wouldn't hurt to examine the long term consequences of immersing ourselves so deeply in these admittedly astounding advances. Instead of just blindly assuming that all change is "good", we should acknowledge that with all advances there are complicating factors. Most medications address some specific societal need and work well with combatting their target illness, but also often carry with them side effects, both long and short term. Advances in cultural tools, including those concerning entertainment, are no different.

Maybe the answer is peaceful co-existence. Maybe we can embrace technological advances while retaining the value of imagination in games and toys. History does indeed move forward, but it doesn't have to be a scorched earth policy. The advance of one thing doesn't mean instant obsolescence for its prototype. Apes are still running around the globe even though man has dominated it for quite a while.

It's a nice thought anyway, but I have to be realistic, too. What kid is going to pay any attention to a rubber snake when they've got "Halo" on the shelf? Who's going to willingly become a nerd amongst a gaggle of techno geeks? Only when our society decides to place value on our past and stop cheerleading so passionately in favor of the latest "hot" advance will we find some kind of balance here and allow ourselves to be "acoustic" once in a while, and know that it's not only OK, but meaningful.

Why I Hate Summer

There are a lot of things to love about summer. If you are in school, you get three months (or thereabouts) off. There's the Fourth of July, you get to indulge in two fine American traditions; that is, eating unhealthily and blowing things up with little or no reflection upon the reason why. It's the time for vacations, where you can feign a cultured air because you've been to the beach at Rio De Janiero or gotten drunk at Cancun, or been one of millions of tourists who have a picture of the Great Pyramid. There's baseball, which isn't the most peripatetic of sports, but is a great excuse to get outside, drink too much beer and yell at umpires like you know what you're talking about.

All of this stuff is great, but it doesn't really offset the price you pay in terms of the heat.

Here in the Great Midwest, the heat isn't just hot. It's moist. Moist as in "walking through water" moist. Moist as in "if I step outside of the air conditioner, I need gills" moist. Moist as in "heavy duty deodorant" moist. Well, you get the picture, and it's not a particularly pretty one.

Some people don't seem to mind the humidity as much as I do, and my hats off to them. Well, I don't wear a hat but if I did I would take it off. I guess I'm just one of those wimpy individuals who needs to breathe in order to function efficiently, who needs to have a cool, dry pillow and sheets in order to sleep well, and whose appetite depends on the barometer reading being about 30.

I honestly don't know what people did before AC. The mantra is "well, you didn't miss what you didn't have" or "people were just used to the heat then". Maybe. But didn't people also DIE a lot younger back then, too? Hmm, I wonder if there might be a connection between the two? I have two vivid memories of life in high heat before air conditioner (or at least before we had one when I was young). In one of them I'm around eleven or twelve and was playing whiffleball with some friends in his backyard. The heat was...well, it had to be around 100 degrees and the humidity was high as well. I was in the outfield (I think it was a three on three game) and our team requested a break so we could have a drink and rest a bit. One guy from the opposing team snarked "Oh, the heat kills 'em!" in a very disgusted voice. Well, yeah, it does; sometimes.

The heat is also an archfoe of the, shall we say, "tonally challenged" individual. I've always had very light skin and exposing it to the summer sun results in burning rather than tanning. And before you suggest it, no, I'm not about to irradiate my epidermis in one of those "light coffins" where you pay someone with a junior college degree in hair care to give you cancer. I don't really even mind having light skin, except that it's just another reason for people to tell me I should "get out more", implying, I suppose, that getting out has to mean making your skin have the look and consistency of leather.

The summer is also not a great time if you like life to quiet down just after supper. Nope, those hot months see the sun hanging around WAY past it's winter bedtime. The kids keep right on playing ball, the dogs keep right on barking at cats, the cars whiz by, the neighbors have get togethers that last darned near till the ten o' clock news. Now I don't mean to seem a humbug, but I like winter where the days and nights are clearly segregated and there' s a nice "settling in" period before you hit the hay. Like the warmer weather, the longer hours of light only serve to make us "great indoorsman" seem even more misanthropic than we already do.

Summer also brings with it the great yearly cavalcade of insects; ants, bees, mosquitos, wasps, grasshoppers, crickets, june bugs (possibly a Midwest reference). I don't imagine I have to explain why I don't like insects. I don't have a raving fear or hatred of them, but they are bothersome. In general, given the choice between a frigid climate that keeps tiny crawling things that want to eat my food and lay eggs in my pet's poop quiet, and a warm one that revives them, I think the choice is obvious.

Then there's the lovely business of sweat. Sure, you sweat in all kinds of weather, but summer tends to drive the point home a bit too often and with too much fervor. I don't think sweating is manly, cool, or tough or anything positive, let alone "sexy" (which I sometimes hear, to my utter revulsion). It's just slimy, smelly fluid leaking out of me (and everyone else) that must be combatted forcefully and daily; sometimes in the summer, hourly. In the winter at least you can continue to put on more and more layers of clothing until you are comfortable. In the summer, you can go stark naked and still be hot. And still sweat.

For us summer shut-ins, you'd think at least the boob tube would provide some sort of solace, but alas, the situation there is just as bad. While the rise of cable television has blunted the summer rerun blues somewhat, June through September is still largely a dumping ground for stuff we've either seen before or won't want to see again in the future. Reruns of popular television series coupled with loser pilots and "burnoffs" of shows that are doomed to cancellation predominate.

So summer's pretty much a losing proposition all around for me. It's hot, loud, smelly and more than a little socially isolating. It's strange how none of this stuff seemed to bother me when I was ten years old, though. I didn't sweat that much as a kid, tans were cool not life threatening, and I was playing outside so much I didn't have time to notice the reruns. The Cubs were always on too, so there was new entertainment to be found even after I retired indoors. Kids were everywhere, something was always being celebrated; Memorial Day, the 4th of July, my birthday (in July), my folks' anniversary (same as my birthday), my dad's birthday in August. Sure it was hot in the day but it cooled off nicely at night when my folks and I would sit outside in lawn chairs and listen to the Cubs on WGN radio and talk to the neighbors who usually stopped by. My dad and I played a lot of catch and later he let me help him mow yards. I remember stealing sips of my mom's beloved iced tea and staying up and watching "The Tonight Show" and "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" with her. I remember going to Kentucky Fried Chicken (not yet "KFC") every Sunday and making a trip or two to the local go kart/pinball emporium every summer.

Funny how the heat didn't seem to matter so much back then.

This Little Light of Mine

"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." Carl Jung

I often have trouble deciding what to write about in this blog. I can think of plenty of things to write about, but it's hard to not repeat myself over and over. Some subjects become exhausted fairly quickly, and others don't really lend themselves to the type of "sound bite" format that blogs tend to favor. Also unlike most blogs, mine is all over the map subject-wise; it's not a sports blog, or a political blog or a movie blog, or even a "this is my life" blog. It's sort of an "everything" blog, which probably partially accounts for why no one ever seems to read it. So I can't really hone in on one subject, or at least I don't want to because I find that to be very limiting creatively.

Ultimately, though, I guess I shouldn't worry too much about what I choose to write about. This is, after all, my blog. It's what I want it to be, and what I make it. I don't have an editor, or for that matter, even much of an audience. I'm writing for the simple reason that I love to write, and that I CAN write. The blog is a great (and convenient) medium in which to do this, so here I am.

On a deeper level, I'm maintaining the blog because writing is an essential part of me. No matter how much I procrastinate and obfuscate (woop! woop! English major words alert!), writing has been a more or less consistent part of my life since I was about six years old. Even if I take years off (which I have), it's still there, part of my identity and history and DNA. It's my "little light"; something we all have that is special about us. It's what I can do well when I apply myself. Some people can build houses, some people can sew, others are financial wizards, and some are great artists. I can't do much of anything that well; I can't build anything to save my life, and as fix it man I'm a total washout. I'm a reluctant driver and a terrible housekeeper. But, given the right circumstances and the proper motivation, I can still write. It may not come as easily to me as it did when I was in high school or college, turning a bit rusty and creaky through disuse, but there is still life in the motor, the lights still wink on. The machine still works.

Sometimes I truly wish my "light" was something more practical and physical. A gardener doesn't have to "think" what to garden. There's no such thing as "bricklayer's block". A computer technician doesn't sit in front of a motherboard praying for divine inspiration. All of these people are able to just go about their passion directly without having to struggle too much with their subject matter; it's right in front of them.


But again, maybe the writing is in and of itself, "good enough". I want to be excited by my subject matter and don't want it to ever become rote, but as long as I'm writing something maybe the purpose is served. As Tom Hanks character said in the movie "Castaway", the secret to surviving was to "keep breathing...you never know what will wash up...". Maybe I keep "breathing" through writing, about anything, keeping those creative juices flowing, maybe that will sustain me long enough until something wonderful washes ashore, like a great novel or a collection of short stories. And even if it doesn't, maybe the combined total of all that "breathing" will amount to something meaningful in the end. Maybe the simple act of doing what you can do well is the point of all this, not any kind of "pie in the sky" end result. Maybe doing what you love and excel at serves the higher function of self-definition, of impacting the world in a positive way using whatever gift you have.

I've lost so much in the last couple of years; my mother, my brother, my place of residence, pets and my emotional and motivational equilibrium. It's made me realize how quickly everything we take for granted can be gone forever, and how important it is to go ahead shine our light when and where we can. It's not only what sets us apart from everyone else and defines us, it's what we can do to be happy and fulfilled in a world that doesn't provide many such opportunities. No one knows more than me how easy it is to ignore your light; we're all able to fill up our lives with distractions that we use to excuse our neglect of our passions. We have family issues, personal issues, work and other practical concerns. But I know it's a mistake to let these matters get in the way of our calling. Without it, we're all just marking time, existing rather than living.

So I'll try not to obsess overmuch about what to write, and concentrate more on writing. To do otherwise is just cheating myself, really.

I still have a light to shine, I just wish sometimes I knew which direction to shine it in.