Transformers

NOTE: This is the post I was gonna use for the latest GayBloggies challenge, but when I was done, I didn’t like it, so I quickly changed it at the last minute. But I put a lot of work into it so it would be a shame to let it go to waste. So here you go:

Something really cool happened in 2007. I was told it was okay to be me. I was told that maybe there were a lot of people all over the world just like me. As they say, money talks, and it turns out $702 million dollars worth of people were just as excited about the Transformers movie as I was.

Before the movie of course, there was the fan outrage. OMG! Optimus Prime has flames! Bumblebee isn’t a VW Bug? And he can’t talk? WTF! Being a proud owner of the original 80′s cartoon on DVD, I can say that I shared the outrage of my fellow fans. Reading about other people’s outrage over these subtle changes were the first inklings I had that I wasn’t alone. We all thought Hollywood was going to take our treasured childhood memories and tear them apart.

But then I saw the movie. And it was good. Like, really good. Yeah, Optimus had flames, and yes, Starscream only had one line, but I left the theater with my childhood intact. In fact, it brought the memories of my childhood back into the forefront of my mind more than anything else had in years.

I remembered my first Big Wheel. A really cool Transformers Big Wheel where the front handlebars flipped up to reveal a robot’s face hiding underneath. I remembered how badass I thought I was riding my Big Wheel. I remembered trying to take our Big Wheels off some sweet jumps (about 6 inches off the ground) at my cousin’s house. I remembered that the front wheel would usually just fall off the top of the ramp and we’d get stuck, but we’d keep trying anyway.

I remembered my first grade Halloween, and all the younger grades had to parade around the school in their costumes and one of the (very) frightening sixth graders saw my costume and said “Cool! Are you Optimus Prime?!” I wasn’t, but I was too scared of him to correct him and just kept walking. I mean really, I clearly wasn’t Optimus Prime. Moron. But it was still pretty cool that one of the big kids was as excited about my costume as I was.

I remembered opening new Transformers at birthdays and Christmas and awaiting patiently while my Dad or Grandfather put the stickers on (back then they came with stickers, and kids’ hands are way too unsteady to apply stickers properly). Sometimes my older brothers would volunteer to help me out, but I think it’s just because they were “big kids” and couldn’t ask for Transformers themselves, so they had to take whatever opportunities they could to play with mine.

Looking back it seems silly to have gotten so worked up over a few changes to some toys I played with as a kid, but memories are all we have that connect us to the past. Even something that happened just a minute ago is only a memory in your mind. But what I learned was that even if the Transformers movie had been really bad, nothing could have taken away these memories from my childhood.