Dudes or Hot Wheels?

 (originally written July 22, 2012)

Life in 1979 was alot of fun. Star Wars was everywhere. This was before ‘Empire’ for the uninformed. My cousin Cliff and I were like brothers. We grew up so close together because my parents and his lived in the Reno-Sparks area back then. So he was either at my house, or I at his. It was my grandparents who raised me as their own when my biological parents split up and then bailed on me too. Fuckers. I still don’t have the true story of the events. I have my Dad’s side of the story, the version where he was the hero and my mother was the villain. But I don’t know my biological mother’s version. I know the truth will lie somewhere between the two stories. Getting back to 1979, Cliff and I spent alot of time together. We played ‘Dudes’, which was our word for ‘Action Figures’. Come to think of it, the term came from my older brother, Les. So when we weren’t playing ‘dudes’, we played Hot Wheels. It didn’t matter if they were actually Hot Wheels. Matchbox, Corgi, knock-off brands, whatever. They were Hot Wheels to us. So when we weren’t playing ‘dudes’ or ‘Hot Wheels’, it was make-believe. I guess that’s what it would be called. We pretended to be cowboys or indians or whatever, but this was 1979 so we didn’t play as a random cowboy or something. It would be The Lone Ranger or Billy The Kid or something. But again, 1979. So fuck those cowboys. It’s Star Wars. Who’s playing Han and who’s playing Luke? I was usually Luke, because I was drawn to the mystical and religious lure of the Jedi. Obi-Wan seemed bad ass, and Vader was even badder. Fucking killed Obi-Wan. Of course, Obi-Wan surrendered himself to the Force, becoming more powerful than Vader could possibly imagine. Hell, I couldn’t even possibly imagine how powerful Obi-Wan had become. I was 10 years old. I had seen Star Wars a few times, maybe three times then. I think I had seen it on HBO a few times, but that may have been later. Was Star Wars on HBO in 1979? I don’t remember.

So Star Wars ruled and I was Luke. The Jedi. The mystical warrior in training. Cliff was Han because Han was the tough guy, and Cliff was the tough guy of our pairing. I was intellectual and what-not (is that how you even write that lame ass word?) and Cliff was the tough guy. Brains and Brawn. Playing Star Wars was alot of fun running around and pointing ‘blasters’ at shit, the sound of lasers and explosions emanating from our enthusiastic mouths. We rescued Leia from the Death Star countless times. We blew it up countless times. But that was make-believe. The world of ‘dudes’ was a different story. I’m going to use the term ‘dudes’ when I write because it’s easier to type when I’m baked like a fucking cake as I am now. As I said before, in the ‘dudes’ world it was a different story. Cliff and I had alot of Star Wars action figures between the two of us. The both of us had all the main characters of course, but sometimes I’d have a new figure that he didn’t have or vice versa.

‘Dudes’ were a new type of toy for us since we were used to the 12" GI Joe, who was a fucking giant compared to the new Star Wars action figures. GI Joe had real fucking hair, people. He had Kung Fu Grip. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. The only guy more bad ass than GI Joe was the custom GI Joe my older brother made once. I had this set of Karate Fighter guys that were like Rock-Em Sock-Em Robots without the ring. And they were Karate guys not robots. These Karate guys were 12” tall. So was GI Joe. My older brother took the bald head off the Karate guy, and removed GI Joe’s head. The bald head went on Joes’ body, making the most bad assed 12” action figure ever seen, like a GI Joe/Dr Steel hybrid. So my brother made this awesome custom, sparking a new phase in my world of toys. Creating your own characters. My older brother usually did all the work. I might tell him what I wanted to customize and he’d make it happen. Unless he was making his own customs. He took a liking to Chewbacca, because Chewie had long hair, and so did my older brother. Guys his age were wearing their hair long then. It was the 70’s. So my Chewie figure became ‘Les” when Les played. Les’ Chewie was a strange hybrid now that I look back. Les took one of my Fisher-Price Adventure People and removed his ‘normal-looking’ arms. Then he removed Chewie’s hairy arms and put the Adventure People arms on him. Chewie was now ‘Les’, a seriously fucking long haired normal human guy that carried a pouch of weed on his side. I didn’t know what weed was then, but Les did, and the toy Les did too.