I am GI Joe

Some time in the mid-seventies I had a GI Joe doll that I loved like the little brother I'd never had.  And by little, I mean ten inches tall with a Kung fu grip.  He symbolized the fullest degree of manhood to my small brain with his khaki military attire, beard, and shiny cut muscles.  I also had one of those small square booklets with a 45 record that you could follow with a *ding* for each turn of the page.  In this highly abbreviated adventure, GI Joe infiltrates an island on a rubber raft and battles a giant cobra guarding the thing he'd come to get which escapes my memory.  He wore his black skull cap that was visually contiguous with his black beard and mustache.  In my feverish imagination I saw myself as attaining this ideal when I reached full adulthood.

It snowed today and I had to take Elias to his tutoring session.  I grabbed a coat and a hat with little thought to any fashion ramifications that might come from what was at hand.  I dropped him off and then drove to a nearby Barnes & Noble to hang out and wait for him.  As I walked past the plate glass windows I was confronted by a life sized GI Joe mimicking my every movement.  This man was older, skinnier, and with glasses, but otherwise shockingly similar in appearance to that long forgotten doll.  Yes, more than forty years later and I have attained the appearance of that man who lassoed a giant cobra with an electrified cable to kill it and gain his prize.  My prize is in attaining the vision of a five year old's dream in whatever feeble form.  You're welcome, little 1975 version of Aaron Haney.


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