Rand Unwrapped (15 page)

I tried to make up for it though by making sure I was always at the same places at the same time she was. Now I'm not talking about stalking her, but it was pretty close. I would see her walking to school, on the lunch line, at assemblies, at the playground and of course after school. I also tried to show off anytime I could when she was around. One time I got behind her in line at the water fountain and watched her drink. She looked just like a fawn drinking water by a brook. Another time, I was trying to show off that I could throw a snowball the farthest than anyone else. I accidently hit her in the head when I tried to hit another kid. This did not didn't go over too well with her and I think she started hating me after that. The next time I saw her was when I volunteered to bring a note from my teacher to Caitlin's teacher. This was a golden opportunity for me to see her again and show her that I was a responsible person entrusted with a teacher-to-teacher note. I walked in her classroom, and there she was sitting front row center by the teacher's desk looking like a little angel perfect in every way. I dropped the note off on her teacher's desk and was heading out the door when Caitlin gave me the
googley eye
. A
googley eye
is a combination smile and eyebrow raise. This meant that I was off the hook for the snowball in the head thing and was back in the game! Well, I gave her the
googley eye
right back and that's where it all went bad. Instead of walking out the classroom door, I walked right into a supply closet and closed the door behind me. Suddenly I looked up and found myself in a room full of textbooks and mimeograph ink and that's where I stayed until the class left for the recess. She was the only one who saw me walk in there and kept smiling at me as I looked out through the crack in the door. What can I say? She was perfect in every way and I continued to love her until the day I moved away about a year later. I never got a chance to say goodbye her. I have no idea where she is now or what she became? She only exists as a memory of a child's first love.

When I recorded the last episode of
The New Generation,
there was that second to last scene when Rand tells Rook that he going back home to write his memoirs. She snaps at him,
“Give me a break, you're just at the beginning of your life not the end of it” – Episode 25 – Symphony of Light.
When she speaks to Rand that way, it's as his friend and you know they're going to be together no matter what.

True first love goes beyond the pretty ribbons and rainbows. It goes to the heart of why two people come together and that they will endure all of the things life has for them. The romantic times and the trials they must face together. That's the kind of love that Rand had for Rook. And I want to think that somewhere, they are still together. At the end of the episode –
Symphony of Light – Episode #25
, as they ride off on their mechas, Rook says to Rand,
“Ready?”
and he quickly responds
“Yeah
!” Then both,
“Let's go!”
Together, they are off to a new adventure. That's the way I like to think of them.

“Shoot me… go ahead traitor - just like you would a dog on the street.”

Eulogy – Episode 8

One afternoon in the recording studio, while working on
The New Generation
, I had the strangest thought.
The New Generation
story line and characters had a familiar feeling to me. I felt as though I had done it all before but I couldn't remember when. Several days
later, when I was driving down Sunset Boulevard and trying to find a parking space on one of the side streets, it hit me. The story line of
The New Generation
reminded me of my childhood pass time,
playing guns.
When I was a young New York Italian child,
playing guns
was something that all kids did in various forms. The first thing it required was having a toy gun. This could be anything including as simple as a wooden stick, a toilet paper holder, your hand folded in the shape of a gun or an actual toy gun. During that period, there was no political correctness and I like most kids in my neighborhood had lots of toy guns that my parents willingly bought me. This was a time when buying your child a toy gun wasn't the same as it is now. Back then, all kids, especially little boys had toy guns. I was no different and had actually a small arsenal of weaponry that I could rely on for a game of guns. The type of weapon you chose to play with was really set by the actual game itself. For example, if we were playing an army version of guns I could rely on a pump action air rifle or machine gun. The air rifles were cool because they had a pump action handle so that you could simulate a gun shot each time you pulled the trigger. Many of the kids would put the nozzle of the air rifle into the dirt, plugging up the barrel. When the trigger was pulled, the dirt would spew out the barrel making a nice mark on anyone or anything you were trying to hit. I also had a very cool
Tommy Burst tommy gun
that was all black with a pull back handle on the side. When you pulled the handle back it made a clicking sound then cranked off like a real machine gun
“rat tat tat tat tat”
when you pressed the trigger. This was one of my favorite toys and I took it with me everywhere I went until I'm sorry to say that I lost it (actually forgot it) when we were on vacation in the Catskills. It started to thunder and rain. I remember putting it under an umbrella because I didn't want it to get wet. We ran to our car and took off when I realized that I had left it behind. We had driven only a minute or two when I, called out from the back seat of my parent's car, that I forgotten it. But they wouldn't go back. The loss of my
Tommy Burst tommy gun
didn't mean anything to them but it was devastating to me and I never forgot it. Many years later as a parent, if my anyone of my daughters ever forgot or lost a toy, I would always go back an get it for them. No matter how small or insignificant it may have seemed to me, I knew it was important to them, so I always went back and got it. Another favorite gun of mine was a
Colt 45 Hubbley
with a white handle and chrome gun barrel.

The
Colt 45 Hubbley
was an extremely realistic version of a western pistol which had six bullets which you could load small round caps on the ends so that I would make a shooting sound when you pressed the trigger. This pistol had the weight and feel of a real gun and was entirely metal excluding the white pearl handle. It had six bullets that fit into the barrel and shells, which could hold small round caps. It was really heavy for me to carry around so I didn't play with it that much. I tried putting it in a holster once and it was so heavy that it made me fall over sideways so I only used this gun for very special occasions like Fourth of July. On that day, I'd load it with caps and shoot it off to celebrate. I am happy to say that I still have it today safely tucked away in a box. Even now, if you smell the barrel, it still smells of spent caps from the last time I shot it. Lastly, I had a array of other fire arms including a snub nose
Shootin Shell 38
that actually shot projectiles.

The
Shootin Shell 38
was a cool weapon for a kid but a major lawsuit if you hit anyone in the eye with one of its projectile bullets. It came with a shoulder holster like the one the cops and private eyes
wore on television. I used it mostly for cops and robbers types games of guns and rarely used the shooting shells. I wasn't really concerned about hitting anyone in the eye or anything like that. I was worried more about losing the shells when you shot them. Those suckers could go really far and were easy to lose. The
Shootin Shell 38,
like the
Colt 45 Hubbley
was a specialized weapon and didn't see a lot of action. It spent most of its life in the box it came in under my bed. I never knew what happened to it. For the day-to-day game of guns, I owned an array of everyday handguns and rifles that could be used for almost any occasion.

These
everyday
weapons included a wide variety of guns including western type six shooters, military pistols, machine guns, rifles and a shotgun. These guns were heavily used, scuffed and worn. I didn't mind if they fell on the floor or got dirty. Especially if someone got the jump on you and you had to drop your weapon. There was no way I would ever drop my
Colt 45 Hubbley
or
Shootin Shell 38
and get them dirty or scratched. So as a general rule, I used the every day guns and had a great time. The actual gun that I would bring out to play the game depended on what exactly you were playing. If it were cowboys it was a western six-shooter. If it was army, then I went with the military rifles or handguns. If it were cops and robbers, then a small snub nose .38 was the weapon of choice. I also had a red, white and blue wooden baton that I used as a sword if we were playing pirates or knights in shining armor. What the game was determined the weapon. However, no matter what we called it, it always was a version of playing guns.

The framework for playing guns was really pretty simple. We would usually divide up into two groups that would then
battle
one another. We usually used the entire block where we lived as the playing field. This would ensure lots of places to hide and lots territory to attack. The rules were pretty simple, each side would try to physically capture a specific target or attempt to
kill
(shoot) all of the members of the opposing team. The kill all scenario was a lot like the rules of dodge ball. You kept playing until one side or another was totally annihilated. This often got a little sticky toward the end of the game, when one player would shoot another and yell something like, “Got ya! You're dead!” The other player would quickly scream back, “Did not!” and then shoot back at them. We didn't have paint balls to mark when a person was truly hit. It was purely the honor system. If you cheated a lot, and never said you were dead when you really were dead, the kids in the neighborhood would know it after a while. In short, your guns reputation would be shot. So, you had to play by the rules and that meant when you were
dead
, you were
dead
. This was a great life lesson. How many times have you witnessed someone that has lost a game who shouts out, “That's not fair!” In the game of guns, at least the one I played, there were both winners and losers. We all knew if you lost, it wasn't permanent and that it was just a game. You would play again and then have a shot at being the winner. Knowing that, kind of made it okay when you got shot or captured. Although, guns was primarily a boys game, we let girls play once in a while.

Girls were allowed to play, but really in a subordinate role. They would usually be nurses on the field of battle. I know this sounds sexist, but that's what the girls did. In those cases, when someone got the drop on you and shot you, they would say, “Got you! You're dead!” You could say, “No way, you only got me in the arm! I'm wounded!” That's where the girls would come in. They would patch you up with a piece of cloth and if you were lucky give you a drink of
Kool Aid
from a cup out of their tea set. Under their
watchful care, you would live to fight another day. Sometime playing guns took on more epic qualities.

On some days, we would not pick teams, but instead set upon some journey to find some sort of treasure. In these quest type games, we would all be on the same team and use our backyards and the block we lived on to create mythical places. Our journey of course would be filled with obstacles that we as a group (using our weapons and imagination) had to overcome. I remember one game we played where we used our entire block to create a prehistoric island that was filled with ferocious dinosaurs. At various point in our journey we encountered these monsters and had to dispatch them with our weapons. The actual dinosaurs could be totally imagined, a truck passing by or a neighborhood dog barking at us from behind a fence. When they appeared real or imagined, we would all take aim at these dinosaurs and kill them off. Every once in a while someone in the group would say something like, “bullets can't kill them!” In those cases, we would make some sort of bomb or super weapon that could do the job. I remember making an atomic bomb out of an empty shoebox for this purpose. We filled it with all sorts of radioactive rocks (actually from someone's garden) and pretended to blow up a giant dinosaur. Sometimes the game of guns started out one way and then morphed into something else. We may have started out as pirates looking for treasure and then the game morphed into pirates fighting off dinosaurs and looking for treasure. The game of guns was over when we reached our mythical destination, we got tired or our parents would call us in for dinner. A variation on this quest, was when we expanded the mythical land to include an area much larger than our own block. For these games we would use our bikes to transport us to any place our imagination and two wheels would transport us. This was the game of guns.

You may think that comparing
The New Generation
to a childhood game of guns is a stretch. However, the similarities are there if you know where to look.
The New Generation
characters were on an extended mission to find Reflex Point. This mission involved many different physical environments that ranged from ghost towns, a forgotten city under the ice, the forest, a subway, and a small village in an orchard as well as Reflex Point itself. In each case, each physical environment had its own set of features that had to be addressed by the characters on their journey.
The New Generation
characters also head choice of weapons that they used on this quest including laser pistols, rocket cannons and rocket launchers. The weapons that they used were dependent on what was available and the situation at hand.
The New Generation
characters also had to improvise and create weapons along the way some of which used protoculture and others that did not.
Episode 4 – Survival
reminded me of a classic game of guns mixed with a traditional game of hide and seek. The team is forced to hide in a forest to avoid detection from the Invid. However, when the Invid discovers the team, they have no choice but to fight. No matter how hard the team tries, the Invid seem to be on their trail. Later in the episode, Rand discovers that the Invid had been tracking their movements by honing in on their power cells. Once Rand discovers this, the team changes strategy and is able to avoid detection. In
Episode 5 – Curtain Call,
the characters in their quest to steal some protoculture become trapped in an underground structure. They wind there way through a maze of tunnels that eventually takes them underneath the stadium where Yellow Dancer is singing. I can remember creating my own set of mazes by running through shrubbery and backyard playing guns within both of these scenarios. The only
difference was our game of guns might have been built around a playing army, cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians scenario. If
Robotech
were available when I was a small New York Italian child, we might have been chasing Invid as well.