Yesterday's outing to one of our favorite stores, The Toys That Time Forgot in Canal Fulton, was our first time back in that slice of heaven since our first time ever back in the beforetimes, in those weeks before the COVID era officially began (the pre-season) and before legit Grogu figures were available and, along with getting to see my wife's eyes light up the most since we got married over her new life-sized Grogu – a far cry from her first, bootleg knitted Grogu – and my Moench/Jones BATMAN-run adoration brought to corporeality in my first-ever statue purchase – have to get the Paul Pope one next (and re-read YEAR 100) – as well as the NECA Wolfman and a Frankenstein's Monster breaking his chains from BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, one purchase out of all the I-cant-believe-I-just-spent-that-at-a-toystore-AWESOME purchases is the one I hold most dear: a three-dollar treasure unearthed from the bottom of the bottom loose figure drawer, a 1985 Secret Wars Captain America figure – uncarded, wrapped in plastic (as authentic a recreation of Cap's time in the ice post-WWII as I can conceive – MCU, eat your heart out) and shield-less, a figure that was the focal point of many a single-and-early-double-digit me tactile fan-fiction, a figure long since thrown out by She and Step-He during my Boston years and now brought back home or at least this home, the now-blue tip of plasti-Cap's nose breaking through his faded plastic flesh being the start, perhaps, of a reconnection to a place, a past, towards which I've felt nothing but disconnect and dismay for at least the last quarter century.

Mem: Have to find the black costume Spider-Man and Daredevil SECRET WARS figures next; along with Cap, they were my holy trinity of jointless plastic funtime.