CARDBOARD DOWNFALL: THE INTRODUCTION

I believe that everybody's got a downfall, but not everybody finds theirs. Maybe they miss the school bus on the day they would have started hanging out with the kid who got them hooked on crack. Maybe they see an ad in the paper that they normally would have missed that somehow leads them on a path that doesn't involve being eaten by a bear. Who knows. But it ain't like that for me. I know what my downfall is; I've faced it, I've embraced it, I've spent thousands of dollars on it, and eagerly await the day when it sucks me into whatever dark abyss is waiting for me.

It all began as an innocent thing. Twenty years ago - 1987, if you suck at math - me and the rest of my family were on the way to go hang out with my uncle and do whatever it was that I can't remember doing when we went to hang out with my uncle. On the way, though, we took a detour to the Dodge's Store in Greenville, Mississippi. I'm not sure if you have those where you live, what with you being anonymous internet types for the most part, so if you were wondering, that's like a gas station, but with better fried chicken and a variation on a hot dog called a "Didger Dog" that my mom once told me I shouldn't eat, because one had made the uncle I mentioned earlier sick as hell one time. But gasoline, chicken, and hot dogs of questionable digestibility weren't all they had there. And on that day, the seven (or maybe six, I dunno, but I believe it was during the summer, which could mean seven) year old version of me headed down the candy aisle to look at tooth-rottening bullshit to pick out which item I was going to try and beg my dad to buy me, and it was there that I saw it. My downfall:

Fifteen cards. Fifty cents. Twenty years.

The crazy thing is that I can actually still remember some of the cards that came in that first pack of 1987 Topps. ("The Real One," in case you didn't know.) Hell, I even still have a few of them somewhere. But I can clearly remember Keith Millard, Gary Hogeboom, the special glossy "1,000 Yard Club" card of Al Toon, and what would eventually be an eleven-dollar Jerry Rice. The Rice should have been what got me, but it wasn't. It was The Fridge. William Perry, to the uncultured. I was only a year removed from doing the Super Bowl Shuffle, and the goofy, snaggle-toothed grin on card #55 was the siren's song that lured me in and eventually made the Fleer company a ton of money they didn't deserve, which is a story I'll get to later. But from that point on, aside from pauses in 1989 and a period between 1998 and 2005, I would both cherish and regret the day Refrigerator Perry took advantage of a small boy.

In the days, weeks, and months to come, until I get bored with this thing, I'll try to tell you the tale of my losing battle with addiction. I'll tell you of the highs and lows of my $10-a-week habit, of the joys of finding that hot new rookie card, the heartbreak of creases, and why Ricky Ervins can kiss my ass.

I got nothing better to do.