Don’t tell Chris, but I’ve been modifying some of the best postcards I’ve received over the many years of Martian blogging to bring him a few laughs and possibly WTF moments now that he lives a bazillion and a half miles away in the mysterious lands of Scandinavia.
When I was in grade school, Chris was one of my best friends. We lived on the same school-bus route, and he wasn’t afraid to stand up to the white-trash bullies who made my daily rides a living hell. Chris and I lived on opposite sides of Mockingbird Park, so we would often meet up and hang out in a totally random way that might seem odd to kids today in the age of cell phones, social media, and getting a million notifications up the wazoo about what your pals are doing. It was a different era, when you could ride your bike over to your friend’s house unannounced and knock on the door, and maybe they weren’t even home or maybe you could kill a couple hours reading comic books together and listening to the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers album on cassette tape when they were still an underground thing.
Anyway, Chris got married and moved to Finland ages ago, then he became a single dad to a son he has absolutely hilarious adventures with. But like a lot of us Gen-Xers in our fifties now, he’s fallen out of touch with most of our old high-school buddies. Hell, some of our old friends aren’t even alive anymore. So, I recently bought a sheet of USPS International Postcard Stamps and started sending him re-worked versions of some of my favorite postcards I’ve received over the years and have been hoarding in the Martian Archives.
I don’t speak a word of Finnish, so I hope Google Translate hasn’t fed me any totally offensive phrases that will get my modified postcards banned. But you know what? Being banned in Finland would be fucking awesome. When was the last time your mail was banned from an entire nation? Never?
Before Chris moved to Finland, I bought a box of comics from him, including some amazing issues of Weird War Tales and Green Lantern I featured here years ago. I kept the things I couldn’t live without, scanned a whole hell of a lot of pages, and sold the rest on eBay to more than make back the cost of the original purchase.
You don’t know Chris, but he was just about the coolest guy you could hope to meet in grade school, a good friend all the way through high school, perpetually hilarious, and a pretty awesome dad. I hope he gets my postcards, because I don’t know what the hell happens to them after I slap on an International Stamp and toss them into the mailbox.