By Ryan Parker
14 years and counting…
Remember the show Picture Pages? You know, the one with Bill Cosby and the “talking” marker? I remember it well, almost like it was yesterday. I can faintly hear the joyous melody of the Picture Pages theme, the comedy and art of Bill Cosby, and the odd sound the marker made when he used it. Ah, that was a great show.
So great, in fact, that I once subscribed to the Picture Pages magazine. The magazine in itself was interesting enough for a five-year old; it was sort of a Highlights knock-off, with pictures on every page. In truth, I didn’t give two shits about the magazine, and I only subscribed for a free talking marker. What child could resist a Mortimer Marker that made that funny sound when you wrote with it? Not me, no sir.
So I placed my order, with parental permission of course, and eagerly awaited the arrival of my Mortimer Marker every day for the next three to six weeks. The first week or so, I couldn’t wait until the package appeared on my doorstep. They continued to run the ad several times a day when Picture Pages was on that week. But like all kids, I lost interest in a few days. The ads were no longer there to remind me of the marker I didn’t have, so I didn’t really care.
Then one day, the package came. “Radical,” I thought to myself. We didn’t use “sweet” yet to describe cool objects back in the day. We used “radical,” or “awesome,” or just randomly said “cowabunga” because the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did it. Anyway, I tore through the brown wrapping that only goes on the coolest of magazines and found no Mortimer Marker. There was a note though. They were all out. I was too late. They were all fucking out of Mortimer Markers. Doomsday was at hand. What the hell kind of world was it where a kid ordered a magazine to get a cheap marker with a corporate logo and never received the marker?
It was a cold and uncaring world: the same one we live in today. They (whoever working at Picture Pages that screwed me and countless other children) didn’t care. My friends didn’t care. They said I was “mental.” Perhaps it was all an illusion, and I was delusional and dreamed the entire week of advertisements. I very well could have been, too. Kids have wild imaginations. Maybe I had a little too much apple juice that day. And maybe that apple juice had been sitting in the back of the refrigerator for a little too long. Things like this happen all the time, but no one knows about it because people don’t listen to small children with wild imaginations.
Well, it just so happens I’m not crazy. Being the dork that I am, I looked on the Internet for information leading to a Mortimer Marker. Apparently there are others out there just like me. Some ordered the magazine and didn’t get it. Others begged their parents to buy them the markers to no avail; their parents bought them Sharpies instead. And some lucky people that received their markers found that they did not make the squeaky noise that characterized Mortimer’s television persona.
It’s a strange phenomenon that dozens of other people besides me suffer from. All we wanted was a damn marker. Today I, and perhaps some of the few dozen others, are deeply disturbed individuals as a result of not getting our Mortimer Markers. If any of you out there can relate to this or can locate a working Mortimer Marker, please email me ASAP. The sooner I can put this issue to rest, the sooner I can begin living the rest of my life outside the fun yet dangerous world of Picture Pages.
