Tintin and old friends

Yesterday I had a nice suprise. Mark Prendergast, a childhood friend from when I was in 3rd grade, sent me a note filling in some details which I had left off my biography. Mark used to come over to my house and we would read my Tintin comic books and listen to The Goon Show tapes my dad had on his old reel-to-reel tape deck.

Mark lived a culturally rich life as he was up on a hill and was able to get the NBC channel that carried the Star Trek series. I remember being left out of all the playground conversations because I didn’t know what anyone was talking about. I was down in the valley and resorted to European comics where the hero always would exclaim “Hello?” when he was shocked and offbeat British humor.

Anyway, it’s nice to see that Tintin has left a mark as he says he now reads Tintin to his daughter. My sister, when she travelled to Thailand last year, brought me back a wooden replica of Tintin which sits on my desk at work – on his way to his next adventure.