If you ever rent a car from Avis, use the hell out of the air conditioning – because they’ll be charging a $1.24 air conditioning surcharge so you might as well get your money’s worth. They didn’t have a windshield wiper fluid surcharge but I used it willy-nilly, out of spite (and contrary to my conservationist tendencies).
So my mom promised an all-expense paid trip to Penticton for my brother and I to make the annual family get-together, of which I have missed the past…countless. All I had to do was rent a car and drive up there. It’s a novel thing to have a mobile trunk. Vast possibilities jumped out at me – I got a large dry erase board for Slackademics at Staples in Chilliwack because I could.
I’ll tell you all the dreadfully boring details soon enough, but I wanted to focus on a couple of photographs that I scrounged out of my mom’s photo albums. Check out my old room in Chilliwack. Can you guess what year it is by the poster on the wall? Stewie? That stuff to the left of me is almost definitely charts or something for Traps & Treasures or Mazes & Monsters or whatever home grown ripoff of D&D I was working on. We didn’t have money for the real thing.
I think there was plastic over the windows so I wouldn’t pee out of them. No, actually I think it was probably our budget insulation. Any burgeoning fondness for outdoor activity was squelched at an early age by covering all portals to the outside world with a semi-opaque surface.
One last thing about this pic – you see those green and white dresser drawers to the right of me, with the stickers on them? My mom got those for me at an auction or something, and they had three stickers on them. The Snap (or Crackle, or Pop) in the middle, the McGregor round tartan sticker on the edge there, and another one. You can see the others I started to add – some Return of the Jedi stickers there. Below is what these drawers look like today:
You can still see McGregor in the lower left and Crackle, plus a host of pop culture icons and various weirdness. The sides, top and even the insides of the drawers are also plastered with stickers. Here’s the other one:
See what you can pick out.
Finally, here’s me looking my best at 13:
Doesn’t get much better than that!
Using the deep echo voice “1984”??
Just taking a wild guess – 1977…
I count two Thickets stickers and only one Jesus sticker.
FOr some readon, I thought that ratio would be a little higher.
Who’s that guy in the blue and white stripe shirt standing next to you in the last picture? 😉
I kid, I kid….
It’s like that Eurythmics song; “Doodoodododo-doodoodoo-dododoo (robot voice) nineteen eighty four.”
Post, and not one, but two GB stickers on the drawers – after that, I stopped paying attention.
Well, those shorts leave little to the imagination…
Is it wrong that these pictures make me love you even more? The shorts…. oh god, the shorts….
someone liked Slimer back in the day. I too peg it as 1984 – I was there! Well, not there in your room, but there with you dressed in tacky clothes. Those shorts, dude. Jesus. And long sleeves with short shorts – priceless!
You know, we’re probably the last generation that recalls the days before there were brand-name clothes for kids. You had your white sneakers and you were happy with them. Now if they’re not Keds or Air Jordans or Nikes, you are a loser. Back in our day, your loser status was determined by unfortunate hair, having no bicycle, or some other sad circumstance, but not by your CLOTHES.
Slimer! I see Slimer! And I also see a Ray.
As far as Ghostbusters go, I see two logos, a Slimer, a Ray, an Egon, a Peter, and what are probably some generic ghosts. That’s all in the first dresser drawer picture. In the second picture, I see at least three, maybe four logos, an Egon, a Slimer, a Stay Puft, and possibly scenes from the show and movies.
This is fun. It’s like playing Where’s Waldo? with 80’s cartoons.
Dammit, it’s like fractal ghostbusters – the more you stare at it, the ghostbusters decends deeper and deeper into the picture – I see three slimers, two egons, but I can’t spot the Peter.
That’s it, I’m breaking into Toren’s room to look at the real thing.
Peter is in the first drawers picture. Top drawer, just to the right of the Boston Bruins logo.
I’m not sure if the sticker directly to his right, or the sticker he’s pointing his proton pack at, is a ghost of some sort. They seem to have the same sort of colouring as the ‘Busters.