September 26th, 1983

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Day 60: November 6, 2019

The boss caught me selling my own action figures in his shop.  Apparently, it’s a no-no.  My boss fired me.  Oh, well.  I told him how awesome it was that he fired me, because now I can avoid the social convention of spending two weeks making $20 per week.  Paco said he’d miss working with me and he’d love to hang out sometimes at his place and play video games.  I love myself some Atari Pac-Man or E.T., Space Invaders or Burgertime, so I said yes!  He asked if I had an email.  And I answered, “Of course!  What, do you think I live in 1983?”  Thank God for BBSs.

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Day 59: November 5, 2019

It was election day: My first election!  I insisted on voting although they had no documentation on my, I provided my father’s pre-apocolyptic address and it still checks out.  I voted as my father.  On my Wendy’s date, Dawn asked if I voted and I affirmed so.  She asked who I voted for as mayor, and I said my mother.  She asked if my mother was on the ballot.  I said, no, but you’re supposed to vote for the best candidate so I wrote her in. Did she vote for my mother?  She said she didn’t know my mother.  But how’s that true when her exact words last week were, “How I met Your Mother”?

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Day 58: November 4, 2019

Today is thrilling: my first date with Dawn.  We are going to Wendy’s, having one of those square hamburgers, if they still are square, and parting ways until tomorrow.  I’m keeping the food wrappers in case people buy them like they do to toys.

The first she told me is to stop asking her to hit me with her purse.  She said it’s not the social convention anymore, or ever.  She accepted the date because she was curious about my behavior, and asked what my deal was.  I didn’t want to give anything away, so I reused that I spent my entire adult life in a coma.  She felt sympathy for me and gave me my first kiss that day!  I may never watch this cheek again.

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Day 57: November 3, 2019

So now I know: toys = money.  I’m not working in a toy store; I’m working in a bank.  I’m home now, and gathering some of my toys.  I’ve got this electronic football game that vibrates when you plug it in, and the players move about.  I figure $20 per player.  Oh!  I also have baseball cards.  I bet they’re currency.  And I’m taking my Lando Calrissian... or should I sat, Lan-DOUGH?  Sorry, Lando.  I have to part with you for date money, but you’re a real ladies’ man, so you understand, don’t you?

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Day 56: November 2, 2019

The Day’s Inn Lobby has a piano and today I heard the most beautiful rendition of Shubert’s 7th symphony ever.  Considering I only ever heard it from my father’s scratchy record collection, that isn’t much.  And playing it was a better surprise: it was Dawn, and I asked if she wanted to have dinner together.  She wanted to go tonight; I said I was visiting my parents, but during the week, maybe.  She said she doesn’t have a lot of time during the week.  I suggested we go speed dating: 10 minute dates each weekday.  Dawn explained that’s not what speed dating is, but she liked the idea; it reminds her of How I Met Your Mother.  I knew that was impossible so I asked, “When did you meet my mother?”

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Day 55: November 1, 2019

I’m still searching for Dawn.  When she struck me with her purse, she had a Planet Fitness bag alongside it.  I went there to see if she visits often.  The clerk said they couldn’t offer information due to privacy.  Then a guy in drag and makeup, probably still in his Halloween costume, entered, and I tried to ask him.  “Excuse me, sir, “ is all I said, when he yelled, “Did you just assume my gender?!” and went into the ladies’ locker room.  I notified the clerk but he answered, “Oh, she identifies as a women, so it’s fine.”  I said that was clearly a guy sneaking into the ladies’ locker room. Don’t the poor women in there deserve the privacy you just talked about?”  The clerk said they don’t tolerate my kind and a guard escorted me out.  What kind?  The sign read, “Judgement-Free Zone.”  So much for that sign.

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Day 54: October 31, 2019

Microwave food is a fun break from the years of canned foods and MREs.  I had to pay for the damage to the old one, but I have a new one now that I sold the other action figures I brought with me.  Today I tried a box of apple turnovers.  I was going to heat them in the microwave, but the box read, “keep frozen- serving suggestion.”  So I did.  Grody.  Next time I’m doing it my way, and heating them.

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Day 53: October 30, 2019

My Computer finally found a BBS service!  Here is my gateway to the world in ASCII glory!  Oh, wait...

It’s my gateway to this text adventure called Barney Splat!  It’s sick: the point is to beat up on a dinosaur with a kids’ show.  He’s purple like Dino but named Barney like Barney Rubble.  No creativity; just a fusion of Flintstones concepts.  He’s just trying to sing and teach children, but you’re among them and you maim Barney and another dinosaur named Baby Bop, and the other kids on the show, while drugging and getting them intoxicated, for fun.  Horrible!  Again, violence induced by trauma is pervasive in this culture.

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Day 52: October 29, 2019

I wanted to meet Dawn again.  I figured she frequents the Day’s Inn, so I asked the concierge if they knew a regular named Dawn, no known last name.  I was asked to describe her, so I began, “She’s an oriental woman...”

Suddenly the lady at the counter gasped.  Everyone turned their heads.

“’Oriental’ is a racial slur.  We don’t say that.”  I asked since when.  She said since some white academics decided in the early 1990s.  I asked what can we say, then?  She said, “Asian”.  So, the Russians are Asian.  How do we differentiate?  She said, defying logic, Russians aren’t Asian because they don’t look Asian.  I asked how Asian people look, and she made such horrible stereotypical descriptions of their eyes, skin hue, height, etc., that I wondered if society understands who are making the real racial slurs.

[september261983-blog]

Day 51: October 28, 2019

I found something worth more than silver: Star Wars!  From my time capsule I took my Kenner “Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi” figure from 1978 and brought it to work to show it off.  A lady came in and saw that the lightsaber had its tip. She asked “how much for it?”  I said we have one in the shop, but she insisted on mine because as a kid she chewed the tip off her brother’s and blamed the dog, and she always felt bad.  She offered $10, but my father taught me about negotiation, and I sold it for $20: half a week’s pay!  Paco said it’s a good thing the boss isn’t here, catching me selling my toy in his shop.  Paco said he opened the shop, as the boss speed dating all weekend and is probably hung over.

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Day 50: October 27, 2019

I was really into Gremlins in 1983, although I never saw the movie.  I only read the book by George Gipe.  The three rules of Gremlins were 1) Keep them out of the light.  2) Never get them wet.  3) Never feed them after midnight.  In my time capsule, which turns out to be mostly toys and food containers... hey!  I was eight in 1983!... were some LJN action figures ans a children’s story book.  I was a bit scared of Gremlins, and always kept a flashlight under our bed, but I think the nuclear flashes killed any that would exist in my 8-year-old mind.

[september261983-blog]

Day 49: October 27, 2019

I completed my calling the entire local exchange with my modem.  Not a single BBS ws to be found!  It’s almost like they don’t use them anymore!  I’ve expanded my search to the neighboring exchanges while I go home and visit my parents.  That Chicken McNugget box has me excited to go into the time capsule that my father encouraged me to build during the last two years before we went under.  I forgot what I have there, except that box and a few Fleer Pac-Man stickers.

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Day 48: October 25, 2019

I remember my first chicken McNugget in 1981.  It was a treat for our family when they were first invented.  We drove eight miles to the nearest McDonalds to try one.  I was six, but I still remember the commercial introducing them and the four sauces, sung in a soulful but jazzy voice, “Hot mustard, barbecue, honey, sweet & sour, too”.  Decades later I must have grown more than I thought or they shrank these McNuggets!  I think the latter.  I chalk it up to Peanut Butter Cup syndrome.  A lot of foods have it.  I think I can fit the 20 piece order in my old 9 piece box from 1982 back home.

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Day 47: October 24, 2019

If there is any Soviet bomb that I know of doing more widespread destruction than any other, and so far it’s the only one I know of, it was named Obama.  Not that clever of the Russians to put a variation of “bomb” in the name.  I’ve overheard conversations about what a disaster Obama caused.  Radiation must have sickened many of the survivors; I hear many people talking about how family members’ health suffered directly from it.  This weapon must have killed many physicians as well, as people said they lost their doctor because of Obama.  It takes a lot of hatred for America to unleash this Obama on it.

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Day 46: October 23, 2019

The pay phones are gone and there is no phone in my hotel room, but it turns out the phone company wasn’t obliterated.  The maid showed me the jack; she just said people don’t use “land lines” any more.  Land line is a weird name for a phone.  Room service offered me a phone, but I had my own, which I connected to my TRS-80′s modem.  Now, I have to find a BBS.  I wrote an assembly language program that will search the numbers and report back the BBSs, like in Wargames.  Who knew that only 3 months after its release, the movie would become prophetic?

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Day 45: October 22, 2019

I picked up my Swatch watch last weekend and am wearing it.  Yesterday at work there was a new employee named Paco.  That itself was strange, as the boss thought I quit.  I didn’t announce my two weeks’ notice.  He said, who does that?  I said anyone with parents.  Anyway, Paco asked what was on my wrist.  I said a watch.  He asked about the numbers.  I said they’re for telling time.  He asked where the colon was.  I told him the hands point at the time.  He said, “Let me try reading it.”  He said it was 6:09.  It was 9:30.

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Day 44: October 21, 2019

I want to be social.  Dad told me that sports makes you an instant conversationalist with other men.  So I watched the Vikings game, the Cardinals game, and the Eagles lose.  I said to a customer, “How about those football games?”  He said, “Football is just a testosterone-fest of men roughhousing each other for sport!”  Another customer said the exact opposite: “The sport is so feminized, I haven’t watched since they wore pink one October for Breast Awareness (I think) month!”  It’s October; I don’t remember that.  Another said the players that won’t stand for the pledge and the NFL’s politicking turned him off.

So I asked the next customer, “How about those Astros?”