Bottle Rocket Blues

When we were little kids, my younger brother and I seemed to have unlimited access to fireworks and kerosene. You could say we lead a mostly unsupervised childhood. It was the 1970s - before playing outside was considered dangerous and before parents had ADHD on which to place all blame for their children behaving badly.

Because I was the only girl, I always got the bitch Star Wars action figures. By bitch action figures, I mean Yoda, Princess Leia, C-3PO, Walrus Man, Ewoks, etc. My brother was the only boy and he got Han Solo, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, stormtroopers, and all the related ships that went along with them. Neither one of us wanted Luke Skywalker though because, even as elementary school kids, we knew he was a total nelly bottom.

The relationship my brother and I had as kids was contentious at best. His passive-aggressive way of displaying his anger toward me started with him secretly switching the heads of my action figures and super-gluing them to the wrong bodies. Just imagine Yoda’s head super-glued to Princess Leia’s body and vice versa. I used to keep my action figures in my retired Star Wars lunch box. I say “retired” because my brother had gotten all Crips versus Bloods on it with his magic marker graffiti. I couldn’t take my tagged  lunch box to school anymore because I couldn’t handle the shame and embarrassment of walking though the cafeteria with it all carved up like that. When I’d come home from school, I never knew what kind of scene was waiting for me in my lunch box. It was like a Jack-in-the-box that never popped open. It’s traumatic for me to think about, even to this day.

When I pretended like it didn’t bother me that Yoda’s head was forever fused to Princess Leia’s body, it pissed my brother off even more. He would kidnap my action figures and take them up to the basketball court in the park. In the 1970s, there were no such thing as Amber Alerts - not even for prized Star Wars action figures. Once in the park, my brother would duct tape bottle rockets together and then duct tape my mutant action figures to the bottle rocket bundles. Then he’d launch the bottle rocket bundles out of one of those yellow Tonka Toy dump-trucks. The result was usually anti-climactic because the mutant action figure rockets were heavily weighted on one end and wouldn’t go very far. They’d usually hit the ground after twenty feet with the rockets still blasting the bastardized bodies until they fizzled out. Rather than have Hoth Princess Leia and generic C-3PO, I had Burn Unit Princess Leia and Burn Unit C-3PO. After several attempted launches into White Trash orbit, I was left with Torso Princess Leia and Stump C-3PO. What was I going to do? I was the big sister and I was supposed to set the example and be above such things. Besides, whenever I did tell my parents what my brother was doing to my action figures, they asked me what I did to upset him. And so it goes.

The action figures are long gone and I’m not sure what happened to the Tonka Toy dump-truck, although I’m fairly certain it met with an unfortunate M-80 accident at the same basketball court. I’m pretty sure if I went to the basketball court today, I’d still see the scorch marks on the asphalt and detect the unmistakable chemical smell of charred Hasbro remains.

I think I’ll have to save the stories about kerosene for another day.