a small tribute to the invisible man who has kept me forever young:
POSEIDON PAPADOPOULOS...
WAS MY BEST FRIEND. This was hardly surprising. When we first met I was 6 years-0ld and he immediately insisted that I call him "The Ancient Traveler" due to the fact that he was much older than I was and said that his favorite poem happened to be "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and informed me that he was named after the Greek God of the sea; or whether it was because he loved to eat pop corn balls and fudge and chocolate-covered raisins and salted peanuts just like I did, was more adventurous than I ever hoped to be, which he said would not have been apparent to the casual observer because there were no casual observers in the place where had originally come from since it was near Timbuktu somewhere in the Sahara Desert and it wasn't the sort of a place most folks would like to go if they wished to remain alive.
Needless to say, I was more than fascinated. He then went on to say that the place he had actually come from was not only awash with crazy crazy hawk-like creatures, heavily armed Nazi soldiers, innumerable numbers foreign saboteurs and spies, as well as hoards of men in the uniform of the French Foreign Legion. It was then that the salmon-colored and evil-looking cockatoo by the name of Burt suddenly popped his head out of the top drawer of my dresser and immediately stopped screeching out the names and addresses of Japanese dignitaries and other foreign agents who were thought to be spies before they were deported from American soil in order to listen to Poseidon talk about the place of his birth. At that point, Poseidon calmly announced that the two of us were about to embark on our first secret mission.
One of my favorite memories was the time that Poseidon and I were in his automobile, with police sirens blaring behind us and rapid-fire machine-guns spraying bullets at random into the street. He weaved terrifyingly up one street and down another, and once clear of those who had been following us and since his automobile hadn't been damaged too much he was able to trade it in for a first-class ticket on the next ship leaving Berlin. This had been almost as fun as when we had to shoot our way out of a den of thieves in a Shanghai ghetto a couple of weeks before that and then had to disguise ourselves as Japanese soldiers in order to make our escape; and as the ship blinked silently across the distance of the darkened Atlantic, we settled into one of its huge and well-appointed cabins, ate chocolate-chip cookies and drank two glasses of milk to celebrate our escape. Poseidon smiled with a curious kind of manic joy as he said to me, Good job, Kid. Because I was only 6 years-old and World War Two had just begun, that meant a great deal to me.
Then his eyes began to flutter, his head jerked once, and he was sleeping peacefully. When he awakened, he made sort of a grumping noise, looked at me again, and the very next thing I knew we were hitchhiking back home from Washington D.C., where Poseidon had gone to inform President Roosevelt that our Berlin mission to spy on Adolph Hitler and his mistress had been a roaring success and said that President Roosevelt had given a hearty laugh when he had told him how huge Eva Braun's hips were.
We then made our way into a small village somewhere Vermont, when he announced that he was a bit out of touch since the recent events were what they were and that he wanted me to go into a small café and order a fried-egg sandwich and that I would have to do the ordering due to the fact that nobody else in the entire world could see him unless he wanted them to and that this didn't happen to be one of those times. He waited outside while I ordered his sandwich and was sitting on a step when I walked back out of the café and took his sandwich and ate it rather rapidly. I wondered for a moment what he was going to say next and that was the moment he said, Since our tour-of-duty together has almost come to an end, as we both knew it would one day, I think we ought to do something spectacular, don't you? Yes, sir, I said. With a wink of his eye and a smallish smile he added, Although he did not grant me permission, I firmly believe that President Roosevelt would like this one, if I choose to tell him about it, that is...
Not long after that, I awoke feeling wonderful, absolutely fabulous, overjoyed at the thought of being back home, bouncing with energy, but hardly disappointed at all to discover that I was actually on my way to the planet Mars. When we arrived, it looked like a wrinkled old shirt that had just come out of the washing machine. The wind flicked around a little, like the tail of a burro who is attempting to determine whether to bray or take a bite out of himself. Poseidon was blowing his nose into a swanky monogrammed silk-white handkerchief and said that he always seemed to get the sniffles when he traveled out into the Milky Way. Just after he finished that he looked directly at me and added that he thought it was about time for me to begin reading books instead of going on adventures with him and that our short-lived escapades immediately must come to an end, that it was time for me to begin leaving my childhood behind. And with that, he completely evaporated and I was back home in my own bed...
...My imaginary friend was forever gone...
...And yet, I thank God that the long-ago memory of Poseidon Papadopoulos rambling about inside of my rather immature mind has remained very much alive somewhere deep within me for almost 70 years and that portion of my being will forevermore remain childlike because Poseidon happened to be a part of it...
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