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Life, actually…

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THE GOOD TIMES BEFORE YESTERDAY

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The double-clasped wooden treasure box is practically invisible. It is invisible because it is in plain sight. I see it so often I no longer see it.

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But once every handful of years, the double-clasped wooden treasure box beckons, calls attention to itself, dares me to unclasp and lift the lid.

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Here I am this morning, doing just that.

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I already know what is inside the box, but gazing directly at the objects within refreshes my memory, teases me with snippets of childhood adventures.

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There, right on top of the box’s other contents, is a stack of Topps trading cards, squirreled away when I was eleven.

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No, these are not sports trading cards. They are trading cards designed for those of us who were useless on the playing fields of competition. These cards were made for us, the invisible unathletic unpopular clumsy-but-smart kids who maneuvered  through life by finding our own pleasures.

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My calisthenics included re-reading and memorizing the historical and biographical information on the back of each Topps Look ‘n See card.

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Back then, they were called bubble gum cards, packaged with a red cellophane decoder, a modest slab of pink barely-chewable gum, and a beautifully painted portrait of our heroes of the day, one per card per chaw per history lesson.

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Here are some of them right in front of me. Jules Verne, Sitting Bull, Jesse James, Cleopatra, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Washington Carver…and on and on. At the age of eleven I knew something about each of these and dozens more, long before we studied them in school.

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I could act smarter than I was, which was helpful to an otherwise unrenowned sub-teen who at the very least needed to spout off smart thoughts designed to impress others when they were not obsessively watching sports, participating in sports, and thumbing through their Topps sports cards.

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At least I knew who H.G. Wells and Mahatma Gandhi were, even if you didn’t.

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Cheap thrills for what we now call a Nerd.

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And another thing—these famous characters of history were on equal footing in my imagination. Francis Scott Key and Jefferson Davis and Ponce de Leon are worthy of attention, at least for 30 seconds each.

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Ironically, they rest inside the wooden box as compatriots. At least they no longer disagree or wage war or gripe.

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Oh, if you are worried that my childhood deprived me of the need to adore famous sports figures, just relax. There is one sportsman in the Topps collection, just one.

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Babe Ruth.

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In my eleven-year-old world Babe Ruth was worthy of attention. Not because of his considerable prowess, but because there was something magical about him. In the imaginations of us kids, Babe Ruth was mythological, the greatest icon of all. I have no idea why…he just was.

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There you have it. The confessions of a Topps Look ‘n See non-sports bubble gum trading card kid. A kid who has grown from wimpy sub-teen to become wimpy octogenarian.

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An overgrown kid who still dreams of picking up a wooden stick, pointing to a certain part of a crowd-filled stadium, and whapping a homer right on target

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 © Jim Reed 2024 A.D.

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