Ripping off the shrink wrap

Nov 12, 2023

My family has been watching The Office – rewatching for Cindy and I, first time for our daughters—and on Friday night we watched the two-part finale. Tears were shed.

Ed Helms’s Andy Bernard says a line equally heartbreaking and awe-inspiring: “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”

I’ve spent much of this weekend stuffing envelopes.

Friday morning, copies of FATHER AND SON ISSUES finally arrived. As with when YOUR WORSHIPFULNESS arrived, I dutifully moved all the boxes into the basement, stacked them in corners, then ginned up incredibly unimportant things I had to do before opening the box and looking inside.

In this case, I decided I needed to find a black Sharpie, to address the envelopes. I quickly found one: uh, shoot, that’s, uh, the WRONG black Sharpie? Eventually I found the right one. That successfully ate up a solid 20 minutes of time.

Then, finally, I did open it. I had been worried for months the cover would be low-resolution, the fonts all replaced giant typewriter text, but it printed just fine. And the spine looked great. I was accustomed to the “skinny paper” and the glossy cover and the 6x9 size: nothing was wrong!

One thign was unexpected, though.

The books are all shrink-wrapped.

When I was filling out the order form, I dimly remember shrink-wrapping being one of the options. It’s often used for college textbooks, so someone can’t rifle through the book for a code in the back and not buy the book in question.

I didn’t need the shrink-wrapping, so clicked the NO button on it. I guess somewhere between there and the printer that NO accidentally became a YES. I wasn’t charged for it: it’s not on the invoice. A bonus I didn’t really want or need.

So I had an extra step in my envelope-stuffing process. After I addressed the front of the envelope, and before I signed each book, I had to cut the shrink wrap and open it up. I had to let it breathe.

The shrink wrap makes things look perfect, untouched. And while untouched is right, perfect is more of a stretch. Some of the worst charger cords I’ve ever bought came in clean plastic clamshell containers. Ditto all of the worst CDs.

My daughters are in high school now: senior and freshman year. The beginning and the end of their journey. Well, of their high school journey: college is next.

I thought my high school journey was done decades ago, but once you have kids you start walking the halls of your high school self again. Remembering who you were at that time, how that you turns into the you in the mirror every day. How many big moments ended up inconsequential, how many little moments set you on your journey to you.

I had a Communications class my senior year: it was a fantastic way for us senior to end our high school journey, since it was all about trying to help us figure out who we were, and how we wanted to tell the world what we were feeling. Many days someone cried in class. It was what we’d now call a safe space.

We all had final presentations to make, final speeches, summing up who we all were.

I had collected comics through high school – it was during comics’s million-selling early 1990s heyday, so lots of other kids did as well. I’d dutifully buy new issues every Wednesday – two copies if I had the budget that week – and slide them into sealable Mylar bags. That two microns of plastic kept the books pristine.

Some comics, in fact, came pre-bagged. Shrink-wrapped. Sometimes this was to enclose a trading card. Often, though, the bag served no purpose. Other than to prove that you hadn’t ever opened and read the comic you bought.

For my Communications finale, I traded a number of comics with my brothers, in order to get 25 different copies of sealed comics. I handed one out to each student. I remember saving a copy of Superman #75, the Death of Superman comic, which came in a black bag, for our teacher, Mr. Richter.

You can probably guess what my speech was about. High school was a time a lot of us tried to bottle away our emotions, hide our true and developing selves, wait it out until adulthood. Living that was was like buying one of these sealed comics and not even opening it up to read it.

So I asked everyone to open up their comics, to beak the seal, rip open the bag. A symbol to actually feeling your emotions and living your life.

And we all did.

And now I sit, ripping open seals of a book about comic books. A book I wrote.

A book most people reading helped make happen.

(Anyone who supported the Kickstarter, your copies will be on the mail on Monday.)

These are my good old days.

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