My Prime
When I was a child, I loved my Optimus Prime like nothing else in the world.
Right up until I went to school he was my very best imaginary friend, and we
would go on fantastic adventures every day, thwarting the Decepticons and
saving the day. Even when I entered school and made lots of real friends,
Optimus was always there when we played with our newer, less dinged-up toys,
and he always won.
Eventually I stopped playing with him, but packed him away lovingly, wrapped
up with bubble wrap and placed in a big wooden box where I used to keep all my old basketball cards. He was put in a box with all the other trappings of my
childhood, and I quickly stopped thinking about him.
Just last year, When our Home underwent a huge renovation, We took out some
huge boxes from the garage. Lo and behold, what do I find there, staring me in
the face, but a big box labeled “TOYS”. I flip out and bring it downstairs,
cutting open the tape, and every item in the box brings back a wave of
nostalgia. My Turtles, my old He-Man stuff that I got at a garage sale with my
grandma for like dirt cheap, those little uncolored rubber wrestlers. But then
I saw, sitting at the bottom of the cardboard box, the wooden case I had
sealed Prime away in all those years ago.
I wasted no time opening the box and unwrapping the many layers of packing I
had put him in, only to have my heart broken clear in two when I saw the state
Prime lay in. Some unknown combination of moisture and heat in storage had
apparently caused all his metal parts to rust up, and the plastic of his legs
had in fact rotted clear off his body. My old buddy was no longer salvageable,
rusted away beyond all repair.
I didn’t break down and cry or anything like that. I just packed him back up
with his gun and his trailer, and left him out when I was putting all my toys
back in the box.
That night, after eating dinner with my parents, I told them I was going out
for a while. I grabbed Prime’s wooden box, got in my car, and drove down to
the beach near my house where I had played with him every day as a boy.
Standing at the water’s edge, I removed the lid from his casket and looked at
his stern, unmoving face one more time. Then I gave old Optimus the only
appropriate sendoff I could think of. I put the box into the water,
tentatively at first, but it floated well enough. Soaking it and its contents
in lighter fluid, I gave it a gentle push and it began to drift slowly out of
my reach. I tossed a match into it, then another, and finally I saw a bright
orange flame leap from the box.
I watched as what was left of my oldest friend drift out to sea, his funeral
pyre lighting up the night until it burned up enough wood for the box to take
on water and sink. As I watched the last cinders being extinguished by the
cold sea, I’m not sure what made me salute, but that’s what I did.
I like to think I gave old Prime a pretty good sendoff, and that if toys had
spirits his would be in Valhalla right now, fighting one-armed Megatrons until
the end of time.
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