Mark had it all, he was living the young boys dream of having his own
lockable fort/room and it was full of all kinds of really great stuff
that his brothers and sister were not allowed, by reason of a lock,
to touch. He had stacks of G.I. Joe comics which we would sit in his
closet room for hours reading and discussing. I would have questions
about the motivations of the ninja's in the G.I. Joe universe,
because they were always doing crazy and anarchistic things. Whenever
I had questions Mark had answers he was filled to the brim with
knowledge about all of the coolest things and had an unbelievable
amount of knowledge about the inner working of the secret order of
assassins known as ninja. He would tell me all about how Storm Shadow
and Snake Eyes were only bound in loyalty to the ninja code until
Snake Eyes betrayed the ninjas to be loyal to the Joes. Storm shadow
was still just a hired gun and if someone paid him more he would turn
on Cobra in an instant. I was so taken in by the ninja mythology that
it took over as my fantasy of choice for when I was going to have
revenge on all the tough kids who bullied me in my life. Beyond just
supplying my with the ninja mythos and imagery of the ninja Mark had
real ninja weapons. I hope that you, dear constant reader, know that
all of these uses of real and ninja should in retrospect be put in
the wink-wink ironic quotes, but that is not how it felt at the time.
Matt and I had always made weapons but our were homemade and shabby
and the ones that Mark had were manufactured in a real ninja factory
apparently located in China. He had ninja stars, butterfly knifes, a
samurai sword and nun-chucks. They were awesome to behold and to
handle. The samurai sword was not sharp but Mark assured me it was a
traditional sword which had at one time been tested in the barbaric
traditional ritual of cutting a prisoner right in half with one
stroke to prove its edge. Awesome, double-plus awesome. I even got to
try out the nun-chucks and they were awesome to but had a tendency to
whack me in the side of my head or in the crotch when I tried to get
all Bruce Lee. We spent hours playing ninja and acting out our ninja
plans which included a lot of sneaking and hiding and attacking
dummies we had made from refuse. When we had to come in at night
because it was time to settle in for bed Mark would keep the ninja
stories and factoids pouring in all night in between those malformed
racists jokes. They were not just good times they were the best of
times.
