Where have you gone, Jason Chayka?

When I was a kid I lived on Long Island, in a town called Bethpage. It was pretty much the place between the two malls, or at least that's how I remember it. We lived at the halfway point on a county bus route that literally went from the mall in Hicksville (no, really, that's what it was called. yeah, I know.) and the one in Massapequa (got no smart-ass comment for that one, do you?). I don't really have much of a specific point in raising that tidbit of info, but let's see if I can link it in somehow.

I'm sick today. Leave it to me to get sick on what is normally my day off anyway, and on top of that, it's a holiday too. (Happy May 2-4 everyone.) Well, I'll show them - I'm gonna take tomorrow off. Hang out on the couch watching old Family Guy episodes and maybe some old movies. Daytime TV sucks. Anyway, feeling this cold? infection? syndrome? develop over the weekend I tried to ward it off with meat fest - next time I'll take pictures and post it, H had gone away to Milwaukee for the weekend and took the camera - but that didn't work out so well. I did however decide to watch Star Wars for the first time in years. (One of the many assets that H came with was an extensive collection of Star Wars paraphernalia, including an R2D2 collection.) After not seeing this film for like 20 years or more I'm surprised at how ell it stood up, considering how crap the "prequels" were.

Man, these decongestants and antihistamines are wiping me out. And the tylenols.

Oh, right. The link - and this will all become clear in a moment - is that watching the movie made me think of my childhood. I was old enough to see it in the theater when it came out (I'll bet Grandma took me to RKO Keith's in Flushing, which is no longer there, alas.) Man, when that movie came out, it was, I imagine, bigger than Harry Potter today. Every kid at school had to see that movie as soon, and as many times as possible. I would have been in the first grade, I guess. And I was friends with this kid named Jason. Jason could do (for a six-year-old) a pretty decent imitation of R2D2. He'd walk around the school yard at lunch time whistling and chirping in the company of this other kid, Tim, who would do the best attempt at an English accent a kid from Long Island could do while walking around in a stiff-armed posture as C3PO. I suppose I'm painting these kids as total dorks, but come on, we were all of 6 years old. Or so. Hell, the amount of drugs I've taken today it could have been last week for all I know.

Anyway, Jason and I became friends, and when I moved to Canada at 9, he was one of a couple of kids I stayed in touch with. Every couple of years when I would go down to visit family I would go out o the Island and see him. We shared an affinity for cats and cartoons, The Monkees and Dr Who (although I wasn't the one who made his own Tardis out of a box a refrigerator came in. Again, I guess that was pretty dorky. Somewhere I have the picture he sent me of it. If I get it scanned, I'll let you judge for yourselves.) Anyway, this long distance friendship carried into our twenties, and the dawn of emailing, and somewhere around that time we lost touch. And watching Star Wars the other night all smashed on Neo Citran made me think about Jason again and wonder what became of him. I'm pretty sure that at some point I tried mailing something to his old address and never heard back, but that may be another hallucination. I do know that online searching has turned up exactly nothing about him or, as near as I can tell, his folks. He had a sister named Rachel, and I don't recall his parents' names. I think his father had worked for Grumman. So, if you know Jason, or are Jason, by all means drop me a line.

For anyone else who waded through this, as a little reward, here's a piece of All Time Quarterback, one of Ben Gbbard's many side projects from Death Cab. I first heard this song online a few years ago, and I liked it so much I bought the album, and you should too. You can get the album here. I see they also have another song linked there too.

All Time Quarterback! Plans Get Complex