Once Upon A Time...Part 1

...in the forgotten borough of a city that many considered the navel of the world, there lived a boy and a girl and in the way of boys and girls that they knew, they met in a comic book store and shared occasional afternoons discussing the delights of the worlds they found therein, enjoyed flights of art and fancy, and shared theories and opinion on various books they enjoyed.

And though they were not the best of friends (for the boy was a few years older than the girl and their circles ran a bit differently at the time) they were still quite fond of one another. Still, in the natural "way of things," they lost touch for a little while.

This was important and necessary, because the girl still had growing to do (being very young still) and the boy was first discovering his footing through the world as a man.

Because of this, and because it was the trade of his father, the boy (now a young man) became a steel worker, and this he did for several years. The girl still had to finish high school and begin college.

But our now young-man was unhappy working with steel, preferring to swing it instead, and the girl, who was now a young woman, had more interest in saving damsels (and others) in distress rather than becoming one.


Both had been very affected by those books they had read at such tender age (and this, dear reader, should warn you that what you read you may very well become, so be very careful of what you let into your mind).


They each pondered the problem and despite the separation of time and space (for how did one become a hero-knight in a land where heroes were considered a fairy-tale found only in the books they had read, and steel in public frowned upon) they each hit upon the same solution.

And so it came to pass that one fine chilly spring morning, the young woman would walk into an ambulance base for her first day at this particular location and be assigned as a partner to the young man who had been her friend.

Such was the beginning of the order of the Tin Can Knights (and the Brotherhood of Blood, but that is another story).

Toys In the Attic

Spent the majority of today writing, and one of the things my character was focused on was a toy from childhood and that special toy, small and worthless as it is, is invaluable to her. It's a key to so much...

It made me think about that one thing, the one special thing, that I have from a time almost before I have memory.

It's a pair of boats, simple boats, made of wood. One's painted green, the other a mustard yellow.

Both were made by my Dad, one for me, one for my brother. The paint on the bottoms of both is mostly worn off, but not the our names written in indelible ink.

It was only about a year and a half ago that my brother and I looked at them very closely and discovered that if you look carefully under the paint on the smokestacks, you can see, stamped and stenciled in tiny letters, that my father named those boats after our Mom.

What's your special toy? What's that one thing that you have that's the key to that special place, days of endless summer or never-ending dreams?