Cards continued

Most of my memories from childhood involve cards or He-Man. The latter of which is clearly one of those things you don't really remember but just think that you remember. We watched a He-Man holiday Christmas special on Netflix this winter and apparently I didn't even remember that he lived in an alternate universe, or that he wasn't always shirtless. I thought he was always shirtless. His name was Adam. In retrospect, He-Man and I have a lot of catching up to do or the guy is like an effing onion.

But this was supposed to be about cards. I'm not a drug user. Those extremely effective commercials of a guy saying, "this is your brain" and then showing us a nice perfectly oval egg, glinting in kitchen light followed by "this is your brain on drugs" and that crazy sob has shattered the egg and it's just frying in the pan and that guy is on his way to a delicious brain omelette. Anyhow, that was enough. However, I enjoy other things in somewhat of a similar manner that folks enjoy addictive substances. Once I loved baseball cards.

I was in fifth grade and headed over later in the day to my best friend's house for a birthday party. My mom and I, more properly, my mom, had gone out and purchased 15 packs of Upper Deck cards for his birthday. Like any normal kid growing up in the eighties I'd taken to card collecting at an early age, checking out Becket monthly's and moving them back and forth based on their value. It was like Sleeth's hoard minus the ring.

That year I'd scrimped together enough cash from begging my mom to purchase my own fair share of Upper Deck cards. Over the course of the long hot summer, the smell of tar damn near melting, dusty trees with nowhere to hide, aimless walks down the street, I'd managed to accumulate nearly every rookie in their future stars set. I could tell by my Beckett Monthly that I was only two cards shy of getting the entire set. What a conundrum?

There I sat in my quiet room with fifteen packs of cards, each one with the potential to complete the set I'd been working months to complete. That's the genius of cards in a way, packs, that you don't know what they hold inside. It could be anything, it could even be a bunch of crappy utility players who shouldn't even have cards. But that allure, the slick feel of the packs in my hand was a thrill all it's own. The packs tore away in the manner that women shed clothes on the front of romance novels, only better, because instead of just one woman you got twelve amazing baseball cards. Admittedly this would perhaps be revised if you asked me at fourteen.

My room was hot. The afternoon sun in Chico had a tendency to be blazing. His birthday was in April, so it's unlikely I can pin it on heat insanity. But there I was, sitting so close to the completion of something, and the mystery of that journey was lying in fifteen packs on my floor. What if I opened just one? What if that first pack had both cards I'd been looking for? I could be done with minimal harm.

The fist pack is the hardest to open, from there, it's pretty much an orgy. After fifteen minutes or so I was sitting in a pile of useless cards. I'd managed to open fifteen packs without getting either of the cards I'd needed. Now, I just had it to make it to the party without my mom noticing. I don't remember exactly how, but I apparently didn't hide it well. She made me go to the party and watch my friend open a box of already opened baseball cards. I'm certain his level of excitement was dimmed. Who is to say that I hadn't gone through and pulled out all the good ones? I wouldn't have put it past me. Hell, he didn't really get much in those cards, I'd seen them.

Most days don't have lessons, or, if they do, they are opaque or as hard to find as a puzzle piece that the dog has buried in the back yard. But days like that seem relevant, easy to understand. I am a long way from perfect and always will be. The allure of a baseball card is to become the allure of other things as life goes on. It is best, I would go back and tell myself, to let the mystery remain. Nothing is gained but much can be lost.