My younger brother William collects comic books, Star Wars memorabilia and “action figures” (known as “dolls” to people who don’t collect action figures). I used to think he was a nerd, but he’s actually a pretty cool guy. He was married, has a couple kids—who also collect comic books and action figures—and lives a fairly normal life.
I usually only see Bil (that’s not a misspelling, by the way; he dropped the second L several years ago, don’t ask me why) at Christmas or when somebody dies. We don’t live far apart, but it always seems there’s something else going on.
Bil, along with my sisters and most of the rest of the family, still get together every Sunday at my sister’s place for dinner and whatever game is on TV; football this time of year, I think. I’m the artsy-fartsy one in the family, so it’s my job to know nothing about sports, a job I take seriously and perform to the best of my ability.
At any rate, I stopped by a couple Sundays ago, mostly because someone sent me a spam e-mail—which looked like the real thing—indicating my dad had died. Why someone would do something like this is anybody’s guess. I called my sister immediately and she assured me that—though he’s now using a walker—my dad is still kicking. Just the same, I decided to stop by and check for myself.
Sure enough, my old man was alive and well and watching football, though when he’s in his easy chair and fixated on the tube it’s sometimes hard to tell for sure.
We all had a big dinner courtesy of my sister Carol and then sat around talking until the kickoff for the Big Game (the one they’d been watching earlier was a Little Game, apparently). It was during this pre-game conversation that I learned Bil had recently opened a comic book store in Grand Rapids
I was impressed. Imagine, one of my wayward clan operating a legitimate business rather than engaging in the drug-running and off-track betting parlors which have supported the Taylor
Bil, who in “real life” is a nurse, said it was something he’d always wanted to do. I thought about it and realized it really was the culmination of a lifelong dream for my bro.
From the time we were little kids, William and I both read and collected comics with the ravenous appetite of a starving weasel set loose in a henhouse full of portly pullets. Superman, Batman, The Hulk, Captain America
My collection was carefully arranged in a large, dusty pile beneath my bed. I kept my comics there for two reasons: 1) I didn’t care what happened to them, and 2) they excelled as camouflage for the torn-out pages I had purloined from my old man’s “Playboy” magazines.
Bil’s comics were read once, tucked into cellophane bags and placed—carefully—in a dresser drawer, later to be transferred to acid-free boxes and stored in whichever room in the house had the closest thing to a humidity-free atmosphere. Even back then, he was planning for the future.
My brother William was the ant and I was the grasshopper.
He continued collecting through the decades until he had hundreds, thousands of every type of comic imaginable. I, meanwhile, got rid of my comics as soon as I was old enough to no longer need a place to hide my girlie mags.
And now he is the proprietor of Bil’s Used Books and I’m eking out a living as a freelance writer and eating a lot of Ramen noodles.
If I were Aesop, I could find a moral here somewhere.
Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.
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