Topic: Stranded

Author: Chris Dunn

I’ve been to a Michaels store once in my life and it was not by choice. I wandered in hoping to find a phone I could use while trying to recall the procedure for using a pay phone to make a collect call and then wondering who I could even call. Who was around at 3:30 in the afternoon who could come get me? What if no one would or could? What if there was no phone? How far was the walk home? Crap, no one even knows I’m here! I could disappear and no one would ever know what happened to me!

Trace it back, Roger Bacon had a half day, and I was feeling adventurous. I was 17, nearly a Senior in high school. I could handle myself even if I couldn’t drive. I had a few coins to spare in my pocket. Why not make the most of my free time? Also, the bus back to North College Hill wouldn’t be coming until the normal time, so it was either be adventurous or wait 4 hours. Though I’m not typically one to strike out on a new trail, adventure does come before boredom in my personal lexicon. Plus, I’d done this trip once before in the company of my friend Karl. I could handle it on my own. I didn’t think at the time “What’s the worst that could happen?”, but you already know where the story ends up.

It shouldn’t have been a thing. Easy-peasy. Just hop on the bus that rolled from St. Bernard to Clifton, (I forget the number) stop in and buy some comic books (while stealing side-eye glances at the porno mags they kept mostly covered up) and find the 17 bus back home. Use a transfer and it won’t even cost more than the usual ride. It would be fun!

And it was! I got off the bus too early, but the walk down Calhoun was an empowering adventure in and of itself. College kids mixed in equal numbers with guys who got out early or were ditching their day at Withrow High School. The street wasn’t nearly as gentrified back 1985. There’s no way the Fantasy Emporium could afford a space on the strip as it is now, but back then it was a little hole-in-the-wall shop on a seedy side street with the windows covered over with comic posters lest natural light fall on the proprietors. I hope you’re all familiar with the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. Let me say from experience, Matt Groening knew his stuff. Bearded, pale, misanthropic, and surly suits every comic book guy I’ve even known (except Leo, he didn’t have a beard). I fumbled around back issues of Xmen while trying to decide if I was getting turned on by a butt or a shoulder that was peeking over the brown paper barrier meant to protect me from my own libido. (In the end, does it really matter) Eventually, “You gonna buy something?” (Which is comic book guy for, “Can I help you?”) Served to put me on the road to home.

The 17 boarded right around the corner, and it came every five minutes. I hopped aboard, handed over my transfer, and settled down with an issue of X-men so old they were all wearing matching blue and yellow outfits. The story was a loss for me. I was really only going for the collector value. My mother had told stories about how they had thrown out old issues of Adventure comics and destroyed baseball cards that would be worth thousands in the 80s. She had instilled in me the notion that patience would let time turn junk into treasure. What I spent $6 on then would be worth $100s by the time I was 30. I believed her, but neither of us foresaw the digital age. The comic still sits in a box in my closet failing to appreciate in value, but still shielded by faith in my mother’s warnings from even being discarded.  

When I looked up from my comic, I knew something was wrong. These weren’t the familiar flanking corridors of Hamilton Avenue. It took a minute to place them from memory, but soon it became clear. This was Colerain! I was several blocks west of where I should be and getting further and further from home with each passing minute. Too shy to ask the bus driver what I had done wrong, I wavered in indecision trying not to panic as the miles rolled by. Compton, the last cross street I knew by name, came and went. Thoughts of getting off and walking from there, were beat down by memories of the graveyard on the hill and the seedy aluminum recycling station that I would need to pass. Not to mention the miles of walking all with no sidewalks. But when I saw Northgate Mall, I knew I had no choice. Beyond this point was no man’s land. The bus could drive off a cliff after that for all I knew. The mall was the world’s end, and as the bus pulled away, I tried not to cry while I considered my options.

Standing stunned by the moment and the brightly-lit isles filled with row after row of absolute junk (what is this store?!), I hear a familiar voice call my name. Looking up, I see Jan one of the managers from my work. “What are you doing here?” she asks. Things work out for me like that a lot. The way my mother always put it, “You could fall face first into an outhouse and come out wearing a pearl necklace!” (She said, this. I kid you not.)