Note: This will be my final post directly concerning Wendy Wilson, the girl from Jamaica, the girl who came into my life, some thirty-one years ago, through the letters page of The Incredible Hulk, a girl whose romantically-potent letter I was afraid to answer. If you are not familiar with the story, please read my postings of April 25th and April 28th, where you will find links to many of the places this innocent little story traveled, growing tangents as it traversed the electronic byways of the internet, finally bringing me to the world of radio, specifically KIRO 710 AM’s Too Beautiful To Live, where, this very evening at 7:30 I am scheduled to offer a farewell commentary on my long ago, paper-bound affair with a girl named Wendy Wilson.
In a way, I suppose I’ll miss Wendy. How can I now ever truly forget my high-achieving mystery girl from the islands, the future ground hostess and professional singer, her black hair and black eyes, her “lovely built with slim shape”, or was that “slim built with lovely shape”? Does it really matter? We’ve moved on now, we’re both theoretically touching the middle of our existence, the current of life having carried us so far from the late 1970’s, those long, endless days when a boy and a girl could wile away the hours, reading comic books and writing letters, imagining possible futures, offering up gift lists, craftily positioning themselves for marriage into an American family, dreaming of a future in that fabled land of opportunity, where the roads are gold and the jewelry shops never close, where men are men and have the courage to answer the letters from strange girls. Ah, the innocence of youth, where ever has it gone?
To bring some sense of closure to this strangely-protracted relationship, one I inadvertently renewed while entering the world of blogging, let us travel back to those idyllic, adolescent afternoons, and imagine a different course was taken. Let’s pretend I had the courage and curiosity to have penned a reply to Wendy’s letter. Let us witness the correspondence of a thirteen year-old boy named Jeremy, a boy who appreciated those rare, quiet moments in the life of The Incredible Hulk.
A weird kid, I know, but I guess he was Wendy’s type.
Hi Wendy,
I am cool. It was neat to get your letter. I think you read my name in The Hulk. It was my first published letter. I wrote to Marvel Two-in-One and Ghost Rider too but they didn’t print those ones. I told them they ruined Ghost Rider when they changed him from a chopper to a racing motorcycle. What comics do you read? I guess you read Hulk because you saw my letter in it. Do you read Marvel and DC, or just Marvel? I mostly read Marvel these days, but still collect some DCs, but only if they're good, like Secret Society of Super-Villains.
I started becoming a collector just a few months ago. Comic collectors collect comics for trade and sale and also to try to get every one. Do you have collectors in Jamaica? The DC titles I collect now are because I got their #1s and decided to begin collecting all of them. It’s fun, though sometimes it isn’t easy. I had Steel The Indestructible Man #1 but missed #2 at the newsstand where I go on Wednesdays to get new comics. My brother is going to the prom with the girl who works there. She lets me go in the back and open the packages of new comics before anyone else. But I still didn’t get Steel #2 because she didn’t get it either. She says it’s up to the distributor to send them but they didn’t. Anyway, I finally got it because my dad had a business trip and found it in a coffee shop at the airport. He got two of them, one for me and one for my little sister. She started collecting when I did but didn’t even like comics before. She only collects Steel The Indestructible Man, Firestorm, and Howard the Duck. I think she’s just copying me. She doesn’t write to letters pages or anything like I do. She couldn’t walk for a while because her knees were growing wrong and she had to have cortisone shots in them and stayed home from school. I had to stay with her because my grandfather died and he lives in England and my mum had to go there for the funeral and my dad was away on business. We had soup and sandwiches on the living room couch and made paper airplanes, the coolest ones in the world, that my art teacher showed me how to make. We drew our favorite heroes on them and then had a contest to see whose could fly farthest across the living room. I had to fetch every one we threw because my sister couldn’t get up, but I didn’t mind. It was fun. Her best plane was Spider-Woman. She likes Spider-Woman too.
Anyway, this is my letter back to you. I live in Western Pennsylvania. We have big cornfields everywhere and raccoons and wild turkeys and giant vultures that eat dead things on the road. I play soccer on a local team. I used to live in Strathblaine, Scotland, GB, where we played soccer all the time, but we called it football. Do you play soccer in Jamaica? I have black hair like you, but it’s shorter, I think, because I’m a boy. I also run and race my bike. My dad and big brother and little sister all race our bikes. We travel hundreds of miles and usually miss school part of Fridays and Mondays during racing season. On TV I like Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Man From Atlantis, Gemini Man, Lucan , The Return of Captain Nemo and sometimes The Hulk, but it isn’t as good as the comic. The Hulk on TV is too small and not really very strong. I do art and writing for my hobbies and will be a comic book artist and/or writer when I am older, also I will have an inground swimming pool and my own zoo that’s just for insects. I got an ant farm for being brave when I got my tooth out in three pieces, but the bottom came loose and all the sand trickled down into my book of The World of Military Tanks and Machinery, because that’s where my ant farm was sitting on top of. The sand made the pages go all brown and sticky. My dad says it was because the ant’s poop in the sand, but I was mad it happened. I have a Planet of the Apes garbage can. It’s from the TV show, not the movies, but they cancelled the show when I was still liking it. For music I like T Rex, Procol Harum, Sweet, Elvis Presley, The Lemon Pipers, Boris Pickett, The Beatles, Frankenstein by Edgar Winter Group and Disco Duck. I also like my big brother’s records of Deep Purple, but he always stays in his room so I can’t get them.
Well, this is my first letter. I hope you like it and write back. I didn’t put a picture in because I didn’t tell my mum and dad I was writing to you and they have all our school photographs in their closet where I can’t get them.
From, Jeremy
PS I like your slim built with lovely shape.
