I was gently brushing the dust from one of my classic collectables earlier today, when something occurred to me. I had originally owned this particular item back in 1967 or '68, but the one I currently have is a replacement I obtained in the mid-'80s. I probably owned the original for no more than two or three years at the most, while its present-day stand-in I've now had for around 33 years. Strange, because it still feels like a fairly recent acquisition, while the one I had as a kid seems to have been part of my childhood for far longer than it actually was.
It's the same with comics. I remember buying the first issue of the 'new' SMASH! in March of 1969, but before the week was out I'd sold it (along with the free gift) at cover price to one of my classmates, BILLY MONTGOMERY, who'd missed out on buying his own copy earlier. I sold it to him mid-week, intending to buy a replacement before issue #2 came out on the coming Saturday. As it happens, I didn't manage to obtain one 'til over 15 and a half years later (October 13th, 1984, from an Edinburgh comics shop, to be exact), but I remembered practically every page as if I'd seen it only the day before.
Amazing, isn't it? I'd only owned the original comic for three or four days at the very most, yet it had made such an enormous impression on me that when I think back, it seems that I had it for far longer. And, just like the previous item to which I referred, those few days don't seem any less than the nearly 34 years I've owned its successor.
Which brings me closer to the point. "Hurrah!", cry countless thousands of rabid readers. (If only.) I was listening to a radio play a number of years back, in which someone quoted a line very close to the following one: "The memories of childhood are without time and without end." Or it may've been "...without end and without time." (I've tried to trace its source, but to no avail so if anybody knows its origin, feel free to let me know.)
Regardless of the exact wording, I know exactly what it means. When I recall my childhood, it's often difficult to remember events in their proper sequence, or the exact duration of certain periods of time. Whether I had a comic or toy for six days or six months, it all seems the same to me in retrospect. Same goes for houses. As a child, I once lived in a house for just over a year, but when I think back on it, my time there doesn't seem any less than the four years I spent in the house before, or the nearly seven years in the one after. Don't get me wrong - I know there's a difference - I just don't feel there's a difference.
According to the Good Book, "One day is as a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years as one day." When I think back to the days of my youth, I kind of know what that must feel like - although obviously on a much smaller scale.
"Without time and without end" - if only life itself were like that. Wouldn't it be great?
7 comments:
You're absolutely right, Kid, replacements for old things still seem brand new, even decades later. And time is absolutely different for children - A day can seem like a week, and summer holidays last forever, which is probably why that's the case.
There's a 1972 Marvel Annual which reprints FF#7, and there's a scene where Ben is being chased by alien guards on Planet X, and he lifts up a wall to hide behind it. In my memory that scene always goes on for ages, but in reality it lasts two panels! Because I remember it as I experienced it as a child.
To make it even more complicated, there's an obscure Michael Moorcock short story called Islands, where a scientist discovers that we all live in our own parallel but completely seperate universes with our own completely seperate senses of time & space. Worth seeking out.
I've got that Marvel Annual (came out in '72 for '73) and well-remember that scene, PD - though I first encountered it in Wham! and then in Marvel Collectors' Item Classics. (Got them as well.) Though it's US soldiers chasing Ben (on Earth), not aliens. I'll certainly search out that MM story at some stage - sounds interesting.
Kid, I was recently listening to a Radio programme called What Makes Us Human, which had Floella Benjamin as a guest (for anyone reading this who doesn't know the name, she was a presenter of children's TV programmes in the UK in the 1970s and 80s).
She said that literally every day, someone in their 40s or 50s will approach her and thank her for their fond memories of watching her when they were young, and when asked why she thought this happened, she replied 'childhood lasts forever' and explained that the things we enjoy, cherish and find comforting as a child always provoke the same warm feelings later in life.
I completely agree, leafing through the 1986 Secret Wars II UK Summer Special takes me right back to the first time i read it, on a bus to Blackpool, and the 1983 Beano annual reminds me of curling up on the floor reading it on a cold winter afternoon, and I love the fact that even after all these years, I'm still learning from Floella Benjamin!
The programme is available as a free download on iTunes and probably other places too, if anyone fancies listening to it (its only about 20 minutes long).
Thanks for the info, DS, I'll track that interview down. To hear you list the dates of 1983 and '86 as if they're from the far-distant times of your long-gone childhood (which, to you, they are) seems a bit strange to me, because they seem like fairly recent times to me. So clearly we're operating in different time zones, which sort of ties in to the topic of the post. Sometimes there's a paradox operating though, as on the one hand, I remember the '80s as if they were only last week, and on the other, they seem like a million years ago. I touched on this paradox in a post once, but I can't remember what its title was.
Managed to find it, DS, should you be interested. It's called 'The Final Frontier - Neil Armstrong: 1930-2012...'
I know what you mean about operating in different time zones- I'm 43 but work mostly with people much younger, early 20s mostly. It feels so strange to hear them say, for example, that they don't remember 9/11 or a world without mobile phones.
And you should have seen the look I got when someone mentioned that the first film I ever saw in the cinema was the 1978 Superman film- some of them looked as though they couldn't even imagine that far back!
I'll check out that post too, Kid, thanks for the heads-up.
Talking of Superman, when the Lois & Clark series was on TV back in the early '90s (or whenever it was), some kid wrote into either the Daily Record or Sunday Mail saying that their dad had said he used to read Superman when he was a boy. Surely that couldn't be, said the kid, as Superman couldn't be that old. Wow! To think that there are people who think that everything they experience must've been invented during their lifetime is mind-blowing. To me, the fact that Supes was created back in the '30s is part and parcel of the character's history. I think I even knew that fact back when I was a boy. And talking of the 1978 movie - that was 40 years ago, but doesn't feel anywhere near as far back as that to me.
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