IT CAME FROM MIKE’S PARENTS’ GARAGE.
So my dad was cleaning his garage and found a few old boxes of my stuff, and he gave me call and asked me to come by and pick ’em up if I wanted them. Mostly it was a bunch of old books (which doesn’t surprise me) and binders of trading cards (which DID surprise me, since I thought I had them all at my house, but apparently were stored there during one of my moves years ago).
Anyway, I brought the boxes back home and started sorting through them…and found a few things of interest. For example, I totally thought I’d long ago sold off those Doctor Who books I mentioned in this post, but nope — here they are:
Well, that’s a picture of a couple of them, anyway. There were about a dozen in one of these boxes, but it seemed like I had a lot more of these at the time. Heck, maybe I do…there’re still quite a few boxes left to go through in my parents’ garage. I think I’m going to give some of these a quick rereading now that I’m a little more up on my Who.
Another book I found was this slim volume of Star Trek stories from 1982:
“Travel with your favorite Star Trek II characters into six new and original short stories written especially for you!” …For me? Aw, you shouldn’t have! I like how it’s specifically Star Trek II stories, since, you know, the movie an’ all. I suppose the stories take place in more or less the same timeframe, but a quick flip-through doesn’t reveal anything specifically tied to the second film (like any mentions of Khan or Saavik or anything). I could be wrong.
The back cover does have this great shot of Scotty and his mesmerizing Space Moustache:
GAZE INTO MY MOUSTACHE AND KNOW FEAR
Had a handful of books like these in the boxes as well:
Man, I sure liked reading about video games. Now, I wasn’t one of those kids who obsessed about getting high scores and perfecting my gameplay or anything. I just liked reading about video games, about the mechanics of the games, about games on other systems, about arcade games I haven’t seen yet, and so on. Still do, in fact…a link to this very technically detailed examination of Pac Man made the rounds again recently, and I found myself sucked into it again.
So, yeah, I’ve got a few of these books floating around in my possession. I’m looking forward to rereading these now that I’ve got them in my hands again.
Okay, now for some of the trading cards…there were about a half dozen thick binders of these, which included all my Marvel Universe cards, my Death of Superman set, the first TSR Dungeons & Dragons set (not quite sure why I have those), and many others. I can see why I had most of the sets in these binders, but I really have no idea why I have a full set of Home Improvement cards:
I mean, I liked the show and all, but still…seriously, how does a thing like this happen?
I even have a full set of the special removable “static cling” cards:
Hmmm…”Big Tool.” Yeah, I think that’s a fairly good self-assessment. I was really into the trading card thing at one point in my life, and there was a time or two when I didn’t show a whole lot of…discretion, shall we say.
However, I have absolutely no regrets about owning these:
Superman III trading cards, baby. A full set, including stickers. I can feel your jealousy over the intertubes.
And one more item from Mike’s Boxes of Mystery: I realize this may slightly contradict my previous claim that I wasn’t a video game score hound, but, you know, Activision used to offer prizes for people who scored a certain number of points (or otherwise achieved some specific goal) on their games, and if I managed to get that score, I certainly wanted my prize. Usually it was a sew-on patch (and I collected…and still have…a few of those), but for their Stampede game, you still got a patch, but you also got one of these:
That would be a genuine metal Stampede buckle, my friends, still in the original cellophane wrapper. The 40 year old me is thinking “put this on eBay,” but the 12 year old me is saying “PUT THAT BAD BOY ON A BELT.”
I think the 12 year old me is going to win.
