Leif's G.I. Joe "Bumper Car"

This is a photo Leif took in May 1987 when we were living at Fort Sheridan, Illinois on the the north side of Chicago. He was twelve years old at the time. I hadn't ever seen it before I found his albums after he died, or at least I didn't remember it. I like it because it's an amusing example of his sense of humor.

We had some "Broetchen" (German hard rolls) and at that time, like a lot of kids he didn't really care for the crunchy crust but he liked the soft interior, so he sometimes he would kind of hollow it out and eat the part he liked. Evidently this time the hole he made in the "leftover" crust made the roll remind him of a bumper car just the right size for one of his G.I Joe figures, so he plunked one into it and added a wooden skewer or pencil to be the rod at the back of the car that connects it to the electricity to run it, and there it sits on the plate full of crumbs.

It's hard to imagine anyone but Leif thinking of something quite like this. He often saw things in new and different ways than other people did, and also had that wacky and surprising sense of humor I've mentioned often.

Leif's 9th Birthday - Honolulu, Hawaii - January 28, 1984 - Age 9

No broken arm in this one. :) This was Leif's first birthday in Hawaii. He was in third grade at Red Hill Elementary School and had a couple of good friends, Michael, who was a terrific artist, and Joey, with whom he could play GI Joe stuff. He was growing up fast.

He was in a special, very small class for gifted underachieving boys. Leif never liked academics. He could just listen and get it all, and could see little reason to bother with exerting himself to prove it in written work. The young man who taught this special weekly class did a fantastic job with those boys. He had them designing board games and writing the rules for them . . . and they had to be actually playable.

Leif took judo classes for the first time, tried a pottery class, and enjoyed going to the beach. We went to many different beaches in Hawaii, but our favorite was Bellows Beach. Later I'll post some photos taken there.

I have to smile when I see this cake. Another example of my less than expert cake decorating ability, but I think I had some Leif help with this one, which features some kind of space ship, something he spent a lot of time drawing then. At that age, he liked doing this kind of thing. Remember the giant R2D2 cookie he made and decorated at about the same age, that I posted before.

You can see that he is growing and changing, not a little boy any more (though he was always tall), and there is a sort of seriousness and tentativeness about him.

Happy Birthday, Leif!

Leif's 9th Christmas 1983 - Honolulu, Hawaii - Almost 9 years old

In the summer of 1983 we moved from Sagamihara, Japan, to Honolulu, Hawaii, were we lived in a townhouse on the outer rim of an extinct volcano at Red Hill, overlooking Pearl Harbor and Pearl City. Leif was in third grade and growing fast. You can see he is maturing a lot from the last photos.

He was always bright, but in Hawaii he was pursuing a lot of ideas, drawing, planning, constructing plastic models, and so on. He still loved his E.T. "dolls" and kept them by him while he worked. He was deeply into his GI Joe phase, as well as his continuing fascination with Star Wars and Star Trek.

Although I no longer know for sure what he got for Christmas in 1983, I can say with some certainty that it must have involved some space and or GI Joe vehicles.

It was in Hawaii that he became so focused on GI Joe that he would save up his pocket money and we would go to Long's Drug Store in Pearl City, which had a huge selection of GI Joe figures, so that he could select one. That was always a traumatic event for him, and I may have written about this before. He usually only had enough money for one, but would want 3-5, and it was just about torture for him to make a decision. As soon as he chose one, he knew he'd have to leave the others behind.

I would point out to him that if he really didn't know which one he wanted most, it really didn't matter which one he picked, he would like it. And he could save up to get another one next time. That didn't help. He would stand there nearly paralyzed with indecision until tears welled up in his eyes. I felt bad for him, coming there to get something he wanted to give him fun and pleasure, and have the choice be so momentously hard.

But at Christmas, he didn't have to worry about choices, at least not at that age. Someone else had to do that, and he could just open his gifts and have fun.

In Hawaii, we were still very far away from the rest of our family. My mother did come to visit once a year, and Peter's mother, Ellen (Oma to the kids), made it once, but those visits were rare.

Christmas in Hawaii was a new experience for us because it was hot weather. It made me realize how all our cultural expectations for Christmas (and thus those of our children) were for it to be cold . . . and wishing for snow. Thus it didn't SEEM like Christmas, despite the Christmas carols playing in the department stores and on the radio. It seemed especially silly to be hearing, "Jingle Bells," for instance, and see fake snow in the windows of Pizza Hut! We talked about how in probably half the world, it wasn't cold at Christmas time, and why weren't there songs that went with warm weather??

We took all that in stride, though, and we had fun together, enjoyed our family traditions as always, and could even look forward to heading for the beach.

Garretsons - Hawaii - June 1985 - Age 10

We all enjoyed our three years in Hawaii. We were so fortunate in being able to live in so many wonderful places, but that didn't mean Leif enjoyed posing for family photos. This photo was taken either before or after Peter Anthony was in a performance of the Hawaii Youth Chorus, in which he sang. He's wearing his chorus uniform. Leif is expressing his disgust with having to stand still and have a photo taken, and he is wearing his signature black leather Members Only jacket. I think I've mentioned before that he loved this jacket and wore it no matter how hot it was.

We lived in Hawaii, at Red Hill, in a military housing area, from the summer of 1983 to the summer of 1986, in a town house. The back of the house faced Pearl Harbor and Pearl City, and we got a beautiful view of the lights at night from our lanai, a porch which went across the back of the house. Leif went to the Red Hill Elementary School for grades 3-5 and his best friends in Hawaii were named Michael and Joey. We lost contact with them when we moved to Chicago in August 1986.

While we were there, Peter W. worked at US CINCPAC (Pacific Command) in the JAG Office at Camp Smith. Jerri was a student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and got her MEd in Educational Technology there. Peter Anthony completed his freshman, sophomore and junior years of high school at Moanalua High School.

Leif was interested in GI Joe figures and vehicles, Star Wars, Star Trek, space, guns and weapons, and especially cars. He was one of a group of gifted underachieving boys that were selected for a special class to motivate them, and it was very successful, at least for that class. :)

Hawaii was really the last time that Leif was a "little" boy. By the time we moved to Chicago in the summer of 1986, he was shooting up in height, and he had always been the tallest on in his classes to that point.

Leif Drawing & GI Joe - December 1983 - Nearly 9 years old

Until Leif started playing video games for hours on end or working at a call center where he was stuck on a phone in a cubicle, it was hard for him to sit still for long. If he was on the phone, he would pace. If he was doing homework or drawing, he would change positions constantly. This is a series of photos I took of him while he was thinking and drawing in one of his favored spiral notebooks. We were living in Honolulu, Hawaii at the time.

In these small photos, you can't tell what he was drawing, but in the original photo, you can clearly see that the drawings are of space ships, some rather "technical" drawings, and some shown in motion with a battle going on, weapons firing. Most of what he drew was either space ships, weapons, or robots, the same things we began drawing again in the late 1990s when he got into gaming with Cyberpunk.

In Hawaii (summer 1983 to summer 1986), Leif, like his friends Joey and Michael, was also a big fan of GI Joe. He had quite a collection of GI Joe figures and vehicles. They played with them, and also got into their own gear and went out into the brush to pretend they were GI Joes themselves. Joey and Michael actually know how to play imaginatively, but there were other kids that got Leif so disgusted because theyd didn't know how to play and didn't know how to cooperate. They would decide to get together to "play GI Joe" but all they would do was set up all their figures and argue. No actual playing took place. Leif soon learned to avoid those kids.

Michael was quite a talented artist and I think he inspired Leif's to draw. Maybe if he'd had more encouragement at school and with friends after he moved from Hawaii to Chicago, he would have had more interest in continuing with art.

I saved Leif's large GI Joe collection to give to a son of Leif's someday. Last year, he said to give them to his nephew, Marcus, along with his collection of Japanese robot toys, but I don't think Marcus has taken the interest in GI Joe that Leif did.

Leif would get some money, as a gift, or earn a little, and he would want to go to either Long's Drug Store in Pearl City or to the post exchange and buy a new GI Joe figure. Then he would stand and stare at the huge selection and be paralyzed by the necessity of making a choice. Invariably, he would want at least two or three different ones, but only have enough money for one. If he bought one, it meant giving up the others. He couldn't decide.

I would try to help him by asking which one he liked best. That was the problem. He didn't know. Then I would tell him that if he liked all of them equally, it didn't matter which one he chose, that he would enjoy is choice equally, and could get another of them next time. That didn't help. He sometimes was so paralyzed by having to make that choice that he would go home in tears without any of them, though usually he did choose one after much consternation and didn't seem very happy about it at the time, as you would think a kid would when getting a new toy.

The GI Joes and their vehicles were some drawing inspiration as well, though instead of trying to draw them as they were, as usual with Leif, they were a springboard for new ideas and designs.