I like the absurd. I like comedy. Not all that is absurd is comical. Not all that is comical is absurd. My favorite comedy points out the absurd though. It takes the mundane and stretches it out to its most ridiculous end. Insert a fish into your ear that will then consume energy from your brain waves and translate all foreign languages as a bi-product. A short description of how an asterisk looks like a butthole. A rotund person buying ham turning into a time travel story. Funny shit!
Now, I'm a product of the 80s. Reagan was president. Everything was neon green. Girls just wanted to have fun. It was simultaneously a terrible time and an amazing time. All the neon glitz of pop culture created a delightful counter-reaction. Because we had tripe like Madonna and Mr. Mister, we got amazing shit like Fugazi and Slayer. The rise of shitty romance and spy novels gave us The Handmaid's Tale and A Confederacy of Dunces. The never ending list of garbage movies gave us gems like Evil Dead 2 and Blue Velvet.
When I was 10, Rick was a good friend of mine. We were in the same group on the swim team. We'd have sleep overs at his house and watch terrible sci-fi and fantasy movies. The 80s version Excalibur sticks out in my mind! Rick's dad was a really nice guy. He was good with us kids without trying to be overly cool or ingratiating. He let us do our thing and we enjoyed the time he'd spend hanging out with us, imparting wisdom and anecdotes in a measured fashion.
The end of swim practice was always chaotic. The San Jose Aquatics was a big team. Hundreds of swimmer ranging in age from 6 to 22. At around 6:30, when practice was out, the parking lot of Gunderson High School was jammed with cars full of parents anxious to get their kids home. A swarm of blue parkas gushed out of the locker rooms and into the parking lot, slowly gobbled up by the giant cars of the time.
One night, Rick's dad caught my attention before I was able to be scooped up by my mom.
"You're really into sci-fi if I'm not mistaken," he asks.
"Oh yeah! I just finished Asimov's "Foundation" series!"
"Here. I think you might like this. Enjoy." he said handing me a tattered, obviously well-read paperback book.
"Thanks, Rick's dad!" (for the life of me, I cannot remember his name.)
I stuff my bag behind the passenger seat of mom's Toyota pickup and hop in.
"How was practice?" she asks.
I'm transfixed by the book. There's a green circle with arms sticking its tongue out of an exaggerated smiling mouth in the upper right quadrant, some planets, and a hitchhiking thumb dominating the surface area of the cover.
"What's that?"
"A new book. Rick's dad lent it to me. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
"That was nice of him!"
We drive home in relative silence. At home dad has already eaten. Probably a giant plate of rubbery meat and a green bean smothered in a greater mass of butter. I eschew the meat equivalent of a car tire called cube steak in favor of some spaghetti and a bunch of green beans. I snarf it down voraciously so I can get to my homework and get some reading in before sleep.
I hop in bed. Turn on the lamp and dive in. "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."
Those are the first two sentences. I laughed out loud immediately. FIRST TWO SENTENCES! I'd read about half of the book that night before passing out from the exhaustion of a long day of school and swimming.
When I woke, I read the book while eating my cereal. I read the book during breaks at school. I read on the drive to swim practice. I read after dinner and homework.
Vogon poetry. Interdimensional sentient mice. A two headed fugitive president. A chronically depressed robot. A whale and bowl of flowers suddenly springing into existence. "Not again!" Slartibartfast. Manufactured designer planets. I didn't know it 36 hours earlier, but this was everything I had ever wanted out of a book! Thanks indeed, Rick's dad!
A little more than 24 hours after I received the book, I had finished it. Now I was sad! I needed more, but none was to be had at 9pm on a weeknight in 1982!
I was jonesing! I needed a sequel! There had to be a sequel! There was a school/swim week between me and the weekend! Nothing but school reading. Ugh!
I never had many toys. I'd get a huge cache of Legos at Christmas and the occasional Star Wars action figure, but not much else. However, if I wanted a book.... BOOM! Trip to Chanticleer Books in downtown Los Gatos with mom! If I wanted a book, she got it for me. No questions asked. My parents gladly indulged my voracious reading habit.
After swim practice later that week, I ran into Rick's dad after practice and lavished him with thanks for lending me that book. I hand it over to him.
"Keep it as long as you like." He thumbs through it affectionately. "As you can see, I've read it a few times."
"Thanks, Rick's dad! Is there another in the series?"
"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and Life, The Universe and Everything. I assume you'll be done with them the next time I see you?"
"You know it, Rick's dad!"
That weekend, mom and I make our way to Chanticleer Books. She buys me the two aforementioned books and I begin devouring them. Done in a couple of days between recesses, travel to swim practice and after dinner.
Ten year old me was forever changed. Star Wars had been pushed to the number two spot in my brain. I was all about Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Marvin now.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Comments