rejecting God is easy but rejecting Optimus Prime is a motherfucker

I never really believed in that whole idea of superheroes with magical powers living in outer space (also known as Catholicism) when I was a kid. My dad was all into that, though so we would go to church a lot. I really just wanted to hang out with him so that was the only reason I went. I'm not too sure why he'd go because he never took communion or sang the songs and he'd be goofing on people with me as we sat in the back pews. Good times! So if I can shrug off the opiate of the masses, why is it that I was so addicted to the high I got off of buying toy robots through all the stages of my life? I'll tell you why-because I wasn't as susceptible to the addictive properties of religion as I was to the addictive properties of Hasbro marketing.

I think the Transformers was more than just a line of toy robots for me. I think I bought into the idea that it was a lifestyle. I was sucked into the world at a young age and I looked at every new toy robot I attained to transform my life into something interesting. But it didn't happen. It started off innocently enough, being a ten year old pretending to be piloting the robots and driving the little cars, trucks and planes. But what I didn't see was that I wasn't driving the Transformers, they were driving me-to buy more Transformers.

There was probably a moment I could have walked away from it all and gotten into some other passing fad. But there was just something so appealing about Optimus Prime and his family of robots uniting to save the world from the bad robots. What sucks is that I ended up looking more to Optimus Prime than to my own dad. And let me tell you, Prime is the worst dad in the universe to have. He's so damn perfect. He's the father you wish you had and the man you wish you'd be. You can never do anything as perfect as dying in the 1986 movie, friggin' martyring yourself so mankind could live to buy more toy robots. Plus just when I thought I could move on and find a new hero, he comes back from the dead.

So his influence continued even after the 80's went by and I became a teenager, which meant he was right there helping me feel inadequate and lacking as a person as teenagers are want to do. Because having been raised by the greatest Autobot ever, I was very aware that I did not have a strength or skill or intelligence of "10" like Optimus Prime. And I never would. But I felt like if I could own a big ass army of toy robots, maybe I could be their leader, their Optimus Prime. I was acting as a surrogate father for them just as he was to me. And so that continued on and off for 20 something years.

But fuck that! Now I have my own son and I don't need you anymore, Optimus Prime! I am finally a real dad and you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to intervene in your corruption of today's children. I will keep you from doing to them what you did to me! I am going to print up little stickers warning the world of what you are! I am going to slap my homemade stickers on every Optimus Prime toy I can find at the Rapid City Wal-Mart so that people will see you for what you are, you Jesus hating horse fucker!