I’ve often won­dered if our thoughts change the world around us. I’m not talk­ing about deci­sions per say, not why you chose to see Charlie’s Angels: Full Throt­tle over Y Tu Mama Tam­bien. Rather, I’m refer­ring to the col­lec­tive thought process of the world. Is it pos­si­ble that you or I with just a mere thought could change the func­tion­ing of our world?

For instance, while walk­ing around in a mall sev­eral months ago, mid­way into a con­ver­sa­tion with a friend of mine, I thought of Pay­less Shoes. How­ever, it didn’t stop there. Think­ing of Pay­less Shoes I came up with a ran­dom num­ber, $12.99, and the color of an almond (in this case Biege). Not too long after we strolled by a Pay­less Shoes’ out­let with beige-colored san­dals on sale for $12.99.

Was this a mere coin­ci­dence or did my thoughts change the world? It’s debat­able and even I don’t have the answers. How­ever, some­one has writ­ten an arti­cle on what is referred to as the Global Mind. 

Every kid grow­ing up in the 80s owned a Big Wheel. It didn’t mat­ter what region or coun­try you resided in, you had to have one. They were the qui­nessen­tial toy for any grow­ing child to show off to his neigh­bor­hood pals and mut­ter under his or her breath, “Yeah, I’m big and here’s proof.”

I think I was the owner of a Trans­form­ers Big Wheel and a Knight Rider KITT ver­sion. Although, much to my dis­ap­point­ment, it never talked back in that spiffy Eng­lish accent sadly.

The best part of the Big Wheel was — hands down — the plas­tic tires. You could run over any­thing in the road or side­walk and wouldn’t have to worry about get­ting a flat. I used to turn it upside down and pre­tend it was a miss­ing piece of some gigan­tic NASA engine. I’d spin the ped­dles as fast as they could go and “revv” up the “engine” part.

Sure, Big Wheels exist today — but noth­ing like those of yesteryear. 

I had a few nick­names in High School and in Col­lege. Among them, my favorites were “Won­der­bread” and “Spe­cial K”.

It was junior year, dur­ing Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tion, when I was first deemed Won­der­bread. Dur­ing an exhaus­tive game of bas­ket­ball with my bud­dies, a group of girls approached our court. There intent, while meger at best, was to steal the court and gain con­trol of the hoop. We reacted indif­fer­ently about the sit­u­a­tion, as you can imag­ine, and essen­tially backed them off the court. As they were walk­ing away, one of the girls — the biggest of the bunch — turned in my direc­tion and yelled, “Until next time, Wonderbread!”.

My bud­dies and I chuck­led, then returned to the game. From that day on, how­ever, I was known as “Won­der­bread” and to this day the nick­name rears its ugly face in fam­ily conversations.

My other nick­name, Spe­cial K, was cre­ated some­time dur­ing my senior year of Col­lege. I can’t remem­ber who thought of it first, but I do remem­ber where it came from. The nick­name acknowl­edges the ‘k’ in my first name. Most peo­ple, at that time any­ways, were sur­prised to learn that my name (Erik) wasn’t spelled the con­ven­tional way; in this case: Eric with a ‘c’. The nick­name, Spe­cial K, was the result of this dif­fer­ent spelling. 

While I always try to write mean­ing­ful arti­cles (or posts, as they are referred to in the blog­ging realm) deal­ing with obser­va­tions and anec­dotes on life, some­times the occas­sional “What Hap­pened to Me this Week” post slips through. I fig­ure this is a per­sonal site, and there­fore it’s nice to share, on occa­sion, with whomever reads this site, cer­tain events in my life.

As some of you know, my wife, daugh­ter and I recently moved into our new apart­ment. We rented a U-Haul truck (all 14 feet of it) and packed a slew of items that we’ve man­aged to col­lect over the past year and a half, includ­ing var­i­ous elec­tron­ics and other mate­r­ial items. We fig­ure by the time we move out of this apart­ment and into a house, we’ll have amassed over twice the items we have now.

On the move over, I had to ride in the back of the U-Haul to make sure the items were secure. To pre­vent mass hys­te­ria, or suf­fo­ca­tion, I’m not sure which, my father-in-law left the door slightly cracked. Need­less to say, it was an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence watch­ing a piece of the road pass under­neath the truck, and hop­ing I wouldn’t slip and tum­ble out, as we moved across town. I should men­tion that we only moved about a mile from where we used to live, but already I can tell we’ll be much more com­fort­able liv­ing on our own, as opposed to liv­ing with family.

For the moment; sev­eral boxes, clothes, and other house­hold items are strewn all over the place. Which means for the next cou­ple of weeks we’ll be unpack­ing, sort­ing and orga­niz­ing our apart­ment to our liking.  

A few years ago I worked for an amuse­ment park named Cas­tle Park. The fol­low­ing is a poignant rec­ol­lec­tion of my expe­ri­ence while work­ing for the “Park”.

Hon­estly, I had never intended to work for the park but con­sid­er­ing it was the eas­i­est job I’ve ever applied for in my life — it just goes to say that I’m glad I did it. Need­less to say, the inter­view process was dead sim­ple, to the point where I was hired on the spot and returned to the park the fol­low­ing Tues­day for the “ini­ti­a­tion” and “imple­men­ta­tion” process.

For starters, they made us all sign what seemed like thou­sands of papers (legal doc­u­ments, tax forms, etc.) and then we were assigned our Park uni­forms. At the time, these con­sisted of a green Polo shirt with the Cas­tle Park logo emblazened on the front and biege khaki shorts. The gear reminded me of log­ger wear rather than exud­ing some­thing along the lines of proud employ­ees of the Amuse­ment profession.

Fol­low­ing the uni­form assign­ment we were then given a tour of the Park, which included a tour of the 3-level arcade and park grounds. Cas­tle Park has, give or take, around 30 or so rides that make up the adult, smaller chil­dren and kid­die rides. Depend­ing on your par­tic­u­lar assign­ment for that evening you were either stuck in Kid­die Land or blessed with the oppor­tu­nity to help out in Teenager Land.

I pre­ferred Kid­die Land at first and even­tu­ally longed to oper­ate the cooler kid rides, which seemed a smidge more tech­no­log­i­cally advanced. You see, you have to work up a spe­cific hier­ar­chy when you’re first hired at Cas­tle Park. It’s a lot like going through high school all over again. For­get about start­ing on the Log Ride because your first step is the Fly­ing Ani­mals and if you’re lucky The Indi­ana Jones (rip-off) attraction.

Like the rest of the wide-eyed employ­ees I was sum­moned to the Fly­ing Ani­mals. Granted, there is noth­ing wrong with fly­ing drag­ons and bears but the ride itself sort of gave me the creeps. I often thought how strange it was to see small chil­dren rid­ing around in hol­lowed out ani­mal heads.
The day they trans­ferred me to another ride was a day in Amuse­ment Park Heaven for me. In my mind I was now an offi­cial “Ride Oper­a­tor”, a posi­tion that reverred author­ity and nat­u­rally put fear into the hearts of young children.

Even­tu­ally I was trans­ferred to the Sea Planes ride where I could uti­lize my skills as a wannabe DJ. It was here where I took advan­tage of the mic sys­tem, which, on a good day ampli­fied your voice sev­eral feet in diam­e­ter. The Sea Planes were hydraulically-powered planes hov­er­ing over a moat of water wherein the child had con­trol of the lift and dip of the plane with the stick.

My announce­ment before start­ing the ride sounded some­thing like this:

Wel­come to Cas­tle Park Sea Planes. The ride is about to start, but first! Remem­ber to keep all hands and feet in the plane at ALL times. To make the plane go up pull back on the stick, to make the plane go down push forward.

Thank you and enjoy the rest of your stay here at Cas­tle Park.

When I moved onto the other rides I pretty much kept the same speech but obvi­ously tweaked it in rela­tion to the spe­cific ride I was oper­at­ing. Of spe­cial note, one par­tic­u­lar ride called the ‘Cyclone’ basi­cally whirled around back­wards and for­wards depend­ing on the set­ting you assigned it.

Time and time again I would cross my fin­gers, hop­ing some­one would get sick so that they would shut down the ride for a few moments of san­ity. How­ever, some­one get­ting sick was rare and there­fore I had to indure the hours of scrutiny and stu­pid­ity from America’s finest park atten­dees. Who­ever said the “cus­tomer is always right” should be blud­geoned with a sack of meat­balls. You real­ize, after work­ing with the pub­lic and espe­cially in a recre­ational hot spot, that the pub­lic leaves their brains at the entrance. 

In the clas­sic Lucasarts com­puter game, Sam and Max Hit the Road, one of the loca­tions you visit is the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, a land­mark of epic pro­por­tions main­tained by a teleken­tic repair man with Tourette’s syn­drome. Like I said, clas­sic game.

These kinds of tourist traps dot land­scapes all over the world and for good rea­son. I’ve seen every­thing from the World’s Largest Ther­mome­ter in Illi­nois, which stood 750-feet high, to the World’s Small­est Cac­tus in Ari­zona, mea­sur­ing about two inches in height. The cura­tors of these “fan­tas­tic sights” are always, and I repeat always overly estac­tic, point­ing out fea­tures of these land­marks with a sprin­kle of fas­ci­na­tion and won­der­ment in their voices.

I’ve often won­dered if some of these indi­vid­u­als have ever expe­ri­enced the world out­side of their home­towns or local tourist attrac­tions. Granted, it’s some­what impres­sive to see the World’s Largest Donut, but I think it’s much more majes­tic stand­ing before the Great Wall of China or The Great Pyra­mid of Giza. Some­thing I hope to expe­ri­ence some day, when the finan­cial gods allow such an excursion.

When you think about it, in your life­time you’ll never be able to read every novel or watch every film cre­ated. Like­wise, you’ll only hear cer­tain sounds, breath in var­i­ous smells, expe­ri­ence cer­tain tastes and sights and most impor­tant of all, touch cer­tain things, be they inan­i­mate objects, loved ones or some­thing as sim­ple as an Oak table. 

Here’s some­thing to think about: What would it have been like if the great minds of our time main­tained blogs?

I was think­ing about this ear­lier today pon­der­ing the results of a blog if Ein­stein could have used this method to relay his thoughts. As you know, blogs are noth­ing more than a medium to out­put thoughts, the­o­ries and other obser­va­tions, so I believe that geniuses like Galileo or Ein­stein would have uti­lized this form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to its fullest potential.

These great minds would have left no stone unturned in their quest to bring forth infor­ma­tion to the masses, espe­cially if their method in doing so was by sim­ply fill­ing in a ‘New Entry’ and click­ing Publish.

Sim­ple and instan­ta­neous “mind-blogging”.