"Don't say goodbye. Say 'Good Journey.'" (Teela)
Sometimes, I feel a little bit like Sophia Petrillo.
When I write these articles, I find myself journeying through my past. In telling these stories about how these amazing characters have affected my life, I likewise find myself hoping other people will benefit from what I've learned in my own experiences. So, yeah - I feel like Sophia Petrillo.
Rather than retreat from that, though, I embrace it. Sophia is one HECK of a woman. So, why not?
Picture it.
The year was 1982, and I was 10 years old.
I remember a particularly lazy Saturday morning. I'd gotten up early and was a little groggy. I poured myself a bowl of Captain Crunch - hey, I knew how to live & still do! I sat down to watch television ... because 1981 was a time when EVERY weekend morning started with cartoons.
I remember a particularly lazy Saturday morning. I'd gotten up early and was a little groggy. I poured myself a bowl of Captain Crunch - hey, I knew how to live & still do! I sat down to watch television ... because 1981 was a time when EVERY weekend morning started with cartoons.
In any case, I remember a particular moment distinctly.
I stopped dead and stared at the television, feeling the cold spoon flat on my tongue - as this exact commercial came on the TV.
I didn't even chew the Captain Crunch. I recall it slowly dissolving as the adventure onscreen unfolded. It was to be my first exposure to...
I stopped dead and stared at the television, feeling the cold spoon flat on my tongue - as this exact commercial came on the TV.
I didn't even chew the Captain Crunch. I recall it slowly dissolving as the adventure onscreen unfolded. It was to be my first exposure to...
And here's that very advertisement, the one that started it all - by taking me to Eternia.
To be fair, it wasn't exactly Eternia - rather, it was a sorta-kinda approximation on someone's living room table.
Whatever - it worked.
To be fair, it wasn't exactly Eternia - rather, it was a sorta-kinda approximation on someone's living room table.
Whatever - it worked.
Of course, regular readers of this blog will know that a bland, muscle-bound fellow like He-Man normally wouldn't be too hugely interesting to me in and of itself as the kind of 1980s toys I'd have wanted to play with under much of any circumstances. Of course, the 1980s had just started and there would be plenty of time for those toys, but I didn't know that. All I knew was that it certainly didn't fit my criteria!
He didn't have "hair" you could comb. He didn't have a bunch of tiny accessories. It wasn't even clear from this commercial that you could dress him up in anything aside from what was shown! Where was the section at the end of the ad that would tell you the toy came with "everything you see here" (which HAD to include something with rainbows)?
But there was something compelling about that mysterious green edifice, the orange Beast Man, the shadowy interior of the castle. And that castle was part of it, too: Castle Grayskull, I remember they'd said that name and it gave the dramatic horror-fangirl in me a serious case of the goosebumps.
I rolled the name over in my mind several times. Castle Grayskull ... Castle Grayskull ... Castle Grayskull.
What were the mysteries contained within it that this He-Man and Beast Man so desperately wanted? Why was there a laser-turret looking thing on it when it was clear that the characters didn't have modern technology? Why did the castle have a skull on the front?
And why were these people called MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE?
I rolled the name over in my mind several times. Castle Grayskull ... Castle Grayskull ... Castle Grayskull.
What were the mysteries contained within it that this He-Man and Beast Man so desperately wanted? Why was there a laser-turret looking thing on it when it was clear that the characters didn't have modern technology? Why did the castle have a skull on the front?
And why were these people called MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE?
Questions, questions, questions.
I bring this up because it's an interesting counterpoint to a lot of the stories that will be and have been featured on this blog. I normally had no interest in those kinds of toys, but there was something very specific about that world that got to me. I'm still not entirely sure what it is, but the marketing department at Mattel deserves kudos for making a toy that I wanted despite identifying as a girl.
The upshot of all this was that the name MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE locked in my brain immediately and I had to know more about that mysterious world. I knew the score: I begged my mom to give me some chores to do so I could get enough pocket change to afford the presumed cost of a figure. I explained patiently to my mother that it was very important that I get a MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE figure.
Once that chore was done and I had enough for what I thought the figure would likely cost, I secured a ride to the toy store and raced toward that dubious aisle of action figures - the one that WASN'T pink.
I always imagine that my mother was grateful at my excitement over getting something called a MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE action figure. At last, she must've been thinking, he's getting a toy that's gender-appropriate and doing it with his "own" money. This, she must have surmised, was progress.
Then I raced back to her from the aisle, having found the figure I wanted.
Once that chore was done and I had enough for what I thought the figure would likely cost, I secured a ride to the toy store and raced toward that dubious aisle of action figures - the one that WASN'T pink.
I always imagine that my mother was grateful at my excitement over getting something called a MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE action figure. At last, she must've been thinking, he's getting a toy that's gender-appropriate and doing it with his "own" money. This, she must have surmised, was progress.
Then I raced back to her from the aisle, having found the figure I wanted.
TEELA!
The box couldn't have made it more clear what this toy series was ALL about. Not only was Teela clearly one of the MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE - as clearly indicated on the box - but she was also a WARRIOR GODDESS!
And there was no doubting nor denying it - the exclamation point was right there on the box for everyone to see! So, that meant the people who made the toy simply KNEW it was true.
"Is she the good guy?" my mother asked me.
I nodded enthusiastically. She HAD to be, though I obviously didn't know the saga of Eternia at that point.
"And who's the main bad guy?" she asked.
I flipped the box over and saw that this information had been handily provided.
"Skeletor!"
I recall that I spoke that sinister name in a quiet whisper, as if saying "Skeletor" might have had the same effect back then as a certain reasonably nice wizard mentioning a certain generally evil wizard in a series of books years from publication.
So my mother spent her own pocket money to get me a Skeletor action figure.
My mother is not a perfect human being, but she always believed in fostering my creativity and imagination.
Thanks, Mom.
For me, this was a major bonus - I hadn't expected to come out of the store with TWO pieces of the MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE collection. And the box suggested there were so many more pieces to collect.
Why is this back story significant? Let's just say that I became addicted to MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE and collected toy after toy, returning to the store every few weeks with more pocket money and leaving with more citizens of Eternia packed into plastic-and-paper boxes. The series of toys could do no wrong, as far as I was concerned.
Heck, they even made a few with combable hair!
Beyond Teela, all the characters were boys.
Eventually, Evil-Lynn came into the ranks, but she was EVIL. A girl should NEVER want to emulate Evil-Lynn!
Yeah, I know that picture's an anniversary edition, but that doesn't matter - it's a replica and that's what Evil-Lynn looked like.
So there they were - the women of Eternia - Teela, Evil-Lyn, the Sorceress (Teela's mother in some versions of the mythology) ... and while these three action figures were in my opinion the definition of cool, there weren't enough women as far as I was concerned.
In my universe of play, Teela pitted her unmatched strength and determination against all the foes of Eternia. She struggled against the machnications of against Tri-Klops, Cobra Khan and Trapjaw; she stood fast against the judgment of the intergalactic enforcer, Zodak; she battled the otherworldly menace of the Evil Horde and the encroaching horror of the Snake Men.
I fought those battles with her over and over, and while I played with those toys I got to be Teela, in a way, in the abstract of my mind.
I never had any illusions that any of this play was real, but I was working out many of my own issues through the toys - but not in the way you might see in a stereotypical movie scene of a child in a psychologist's office talking through various problems with dolls. It was incredibly valuable therapy for me to have such a strong warrior among the ranks of my imaginary heroes, yes, but I wasn't consciously aware of it at the time, in terms of that therapeutic aspect. I was just glad Teela was there.
That "classic" Teela figure, with her armor & staff, went just about everywhere I went. My mom even got me a little black zipper-bag to keep the accessories in - and a plastic baggie to further contain them within the bag.
So accessorized, I took Teela (and a few enemies for her to wreck with her unstoppable fighting prowess) to every locale that mattered in my life.
We went to the beach, I brought Teela. We went to the park, I brought Teela. She accompanied me, hidden from sight, on my way to and from school. In my mind, there was no quest she couldn't complete. There was no challenge she wouldn't face. And as long as I had that action figure, a part of that power seemed like it helped to spark confidence and courage within me, as well.
Teela wasn't just a warrior. She wasn't just a goddess. She was a WARRIOR GODDESS, and that was like a hot-iron brand in my brain, that concept. She was somehow a supernatural being AND a human being. I was not a religious kid, so to me a goddess was just something that sort of meant "perfect" in the sense that she could win any fight, be as strong as she needed to be, overcome anything.
Oh, she struggled mightily - even as a kid, I understood the narrative that if something's too easy it isn't interesting and I self-narrated like that, where she had to use her "last ounce of strength" to overcome some obstacle or other. But it made ME feel strong to be her like that, even if it was just in play.
I even took gymnastics because of Teela.
I ended up getting very sick from eating yogurt right before practice because I was really hungry for yogurt.
I ended up quitting gymnastics because I started getting "memory sickness" from being so ill that one time - recurring stomach aches - BAD ones. My warrior strength faltered, I'll admit it.
But when I took gymnastics I wanted to be able to do the things I imagined she did, since in my imagination she was forever using the staff like parallel bars, since in my mind it could float around as well as work as a weapon in her hands.
She was quite the gymnast in my imagination, and much of her combat involved doing kick-flips from the floating parallel bars of her staff.
Did I mention I LOVED gymnasts? I did. I used to watch any gymnastics event on TV. I still do.
But I was insane for the sport when I was little. Teela fed right into that.
After all, what true Warrior Goddess wouldn't also be a perfect gymnast?
It was just correct.
But there was even more to my love of Teela than all this. She also serves as an example to me of how a transperson has to be adaptive - with so much of life, with so many different situations.
We can't just walk into a toy store and find exactly what we're looking for as a kid any more than we can expect a gender-neutral bathroom in every building. We can't expect ANY part of the world to conform, and so we must learn to be constructive - to be creative - to be able to mold and shape our own environments.
For me, there was the Teela that existed in my imagination who was not at all like the one in the Filmation cartoon that followed the toy line into existence. That show was called HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. Not in my world. In my world the toys were TEELA: WARRIOR GODDESS - AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.
And that was fine with me. Teela represented to me so many elements of a virtuous character, perhaps specifically because her persona was so vague on that box.
I imbued her with what I considered to be goddess-like qualities, even though they weren't necessarily characteristics of the actual character in the Eternian mythology:
I thought those personal virtues of generosity and patience toward others were also especially important.
With my autism, I was so used to being misunderstood.
Heck, I even remember playing at the idea that Skeletor felt that the Masters of the Universe - "the good guys" - had betrayed him to make him a skeleton man. I turned out to be correct, once the canon continuity of Skeletor-as-Keldor came into being.
Teela wouldn't give in to feelings of betrayal, in my view. She was impervious to that.
Of course, she wasn't invulnerable or indestructible and she couldn't lift, say, a mountain - I gave her challenges to overcome that involved her mind as well as her physical strength, and working her through those challenges helped me think of how to be patient and solve the challenges I dealt with in my own life.
Curiously, in my imagination, she was also somewhat nomadic, moving from place to place - perhaps mirroring my own feelings that I didn't have a real place in the life into which I was born, a real home.
I don't have the Teela toy any more.
It eventually fell apart from wear and tear, at an airport.
But even as I disposed of the toy way back then, I've tried since then to hold those virtues it represented in my heart, keeping that spirit alive in a way that outlasts any plastic toy.
As I think about those virtues, I'm reminded of a quote spoken by the Teela in the live-action MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE movie.
In the film, Teela is portrayed by actress Chelsea Field.
Her portrayal of Teela is rather playful, focusing on the character's no-nonsense warrior spirit and how that's at odds with Earth customs.
The quote I think about from the movie is when Teela says "Don't say goodbye. Say 'Good Journey.'" She's talking about how people shouldn't see a parting of the ways as the end of the story, or as an end to friendship. I think of my childhood like that - I've never said "goodbye" to it; I still find joy in these characters, in their adventures. I think of myself simply going on the long journey of my life, with my past as much a part of that journey as my future.
Wherever that journey takes me, I think it's worthwhile to hold on to the virtues I learned when I was young, and keep them alive. After all, those virtues have served me well so far in my life.
I don't owe these virtues to Teela. I owe them to myself, for forging them out of my experiences and maintaining an outlook on life that's ultimately about measuring myself by my successes more than my failures; it's what I think is the mark of a warrior.
And my journey keeps going - and I find myself thinking about another time in my past that was one of my first big journeys out into the world in a way that put me into a state where I felt like I was on my own.
My school sent us all to a week-long campground for our "Outdoor Education" week, and we all had to bring a sleeping bag, I had only one in mind.
And although I certainly didn't make a point of telling anyone about it, I was a little less homesick because I knew I had to be brave. Because there on the sleeping bag was Teela, and by sleeping inside, I wasn't a scared kid away from home for an extended period for the first time.
I was on the plains of Eternia!
And I was a WARRIOR GODDESS!
I like to think I still am.
And there was no doubting nor denying it - the exclamation point was right there on the box for everyone to see! So, that meant the people who made the toy simply KNEW it was true.
"Is she the good guy?" my mother asked me.
I nodded enthusiastically. She HAD to be, though I obviously didn't know the saga of Eternia at that point.
"And who's the main bad guy?" she asked.
I flipped the box over and saw that this information had been handily provided.
"Skeletor!"
I recall that I spoke that sinister name in a quiet whisper, as if saying "Skeletor" might have had the same effect back then as a certain reasonably nice wizard mentioning a certain generally evil wizard in a series of books years from publication.
So my mother spent her own pocket money to get me a Skeletor action figure.
My mother is not a perfect human being, but she always believed in fostering my creativity and imagination.
Thanks, Mom.
For me, this was a major bonus - I hadn't expected to come out of the store with TWO pieces of the MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE collection. And the box suggested there were so many more pieces to collect.
Why is this back story significant? Let's just say that I became addicted to MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE and collected toy after toy, returning to the store every few weeks with more pocket money and leaving with more citizens of Eternia packed into plastic-and-paper boxes. The series of toys could do no wrong, as far as I was concerned.
Heck, they even made a few with combable hair!
But I quickly noticed a problem.
Beyond Teela, all the characters were boys.
Eventually, Evil-Lynn came into the ranks, but she was EVIL. A girl should NEVER want to emulate Evil-Lynn!
Yeah, I know that picture's an anniversary edition, but that doesn't matter - it's a replica and that's what Evil-Lynn looked like.
So there they were - the women of Eternia - Teela, Evil-Lyn, the Sorceress (Teela's mother in some versions of the mythology) ... and while these three action figures were in my opinion the definition of cool, there weren't enough women as far as I was concerned.
In my universe of play, Teela pitted her unmatched strength and determination against all the foes of Eternia. She struggled against the machnications of against Tri-Klops, Cobra Khan and Trapjaw; she stood fast against the judgment of the intergalactic enforcer, Zodak; she battled the otherworldly menace of the Evil Horde and the encroaching horror of the Snake Men.
I fought those battles with her over and over, and while I played with those toys I got to be Teela, in a way, in the abstract of my mind.
I never had any illusions that any of this play was real, but I was working out many of my own issues through the toys - but not in the way you might see in a stereotypical movie scene of a child in a psychologist's office talking through various problems with dolls. It was incredibly valuable therapy for me to have such a strong warrior among the ranks of my imaginary heroes, yes, but I wasn't consciously aware of it at the time, in terms of that therapeutic aspect. I was just glad Teela was there.
That "classic" Teela figure, with her armor & staff, went just about everywhere I went. My mom even got me a little black zipper-bag to keep the accessories in - and a plastic baggie to further contain them within the bag.
So accessorized, I took Teela (and a few enemies for her to wreck with her unstoppable fighting prowess) to every locale that mattered in my life.
We went to the beach, I brought Teela. We went to the park, I brought Teela. She accompanied me, hidden from sight, on my way to and from school. In my mind, there was no quest she couldn't complete. There was no challenge she wouldn't face. And as long as I had that action figure, a part of that power seemed like it helped to spark confidence and courage within me, as well.
And through it all, there was that singular feeling of pride I wrote about a moment ago. I felt that pride because I extended what the box said about her into myself. When I played with my Teela action figure, I could momentarily detach from myself. I could forget the real world and lose myself in Eternia. It was pure fantasy play. I didn't work out my own problems consciously through that toy as I did with some others. No, when I was playing with Teela - I was escaping into the fantasy of BEING her, and living in Eternia, and proving myself - and that is what helped me work out my real life problems, as curious as it might seem. I could step away and see these issues in my life from a more neutral viewpoint.
Teela wasn't just a warrior. She wasn't just a goddess. She was a WARRIOR GODDESS, and that was like a hot-iron brand in my brain, that concept. She was somehow a supernatural being AND a human being. I was not a religious kid, so to me a goddess was just something that sort of meant "perfect" in the sense that she could win any fight, be as strong as she needed to be, overcome anything.
Oh, she struggled mightily - even as a kid, I understood the narrative that if something's too easy it isn't interesting and I self-narrated like that, where she had to use her "last ounce of strength" to overcome some obstacle or other. But it made ME feel strong to be her like that, even if it was just in play.
I even took gymnastics because of Teela.
I ended up getting very sick from eating yogurt right before practice because I was really hungry for yogurt.
I ended up quitting gymnastics because I started getting "memory sickness" from being so ill that one time - recurring stomach aches - BAD ones. My warrior strength faltered, I'll admit it.
But when I took gymnastics I wanted to be able to do the things I imagined she did, since in my imagination she was forever using the staff like parallel bars, since in my mind it could float around as well as work as a weapon in her hands.
She was quite the gymnast in my imagination, and much of her combat involved doing kick-flips from the floating parallel bars of her staff.
Did I mention I LOVED gymnasts? I did. I used to watch any gymnastics event on TV. I still do.
But I was insane for the sport when I was little. Teela fed right into that.
After all, what true Warrior Goddess wouldn't also be a perfect gymnast?
It was just correct.
But there was even more to my love of Teela than all this. She also serves as an example to me of how a transperson has to be adaptive - with so much of life, with so many different situations.
We can't just walk into a toy store and find exactly what we're looking for as a kid any more than we can expect a gender-neutral bathroom in every building. We can't expect ANY part of the world to conform, and so we must learn to be constructive - to be creative - to be able to mold and shape our own environments.
For me, there was the Teela that existed in my imagination who was not at all like the one in the Filmation cartoon that followed the toy line into existence. That show was called HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. Not in my world. In my world the toys were TEELA: WARRIOR GODDESS - AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.
And that was fine with me. Teela represented to me so many elements of a virtuous character, perhaps specifically because her persona was so vague on that box.
I imbued her with what I considered to be goddess-like qualities, even though they weren't necessarily characteristics of the actual character in the Eternian mythology:
- She was cunning, stealthy and swift - but above all, she was strong.
- She had ability to heal people with her magical staff) - I worked out as her being able to invoke the curative power of snake venom since she wore snake armor.
- She never told a lie.
- She was brave, but not foolish about it.
- She wouldn't rush into danger.
- She was a planner, someone who would observe from afar the inner workings of her opponents and then strike when she understood their strengths.
- She always CONFRONTED evil with its true nature evil
- She was kind even in the face of that evil, offering a hand of friendship, offering her opponents a different way of living.
I thought those personal virtues of generosity and patience toward others were also especially important.
With my autism, I was so used to being misunderstood.
Heck, I even remember playing at the idea that Skeletor felt that the Masters of the Universe - "the good guys" - had betrayed him to make him a skeleton man. I turned out to be correct, once the canon continuity of Skeletor-as-Keldor came into being.
Teela wouldn't give in to feelings of betrayal, in my view. She was impervious to that.
Of course, she wasn't invulnerable or indestructible and she couldn't lift, say, a mountain - I gave her challenges to overcome that involved her mind as well as her physical strength, and working her through those challenges helped me think of how to be patient and solve the challenges I dealt with in my own life.
Curiously, in my imagination, she was also somewhat nomadic, moving from place to place - perhaps mirroring my own feelings that I didn't have a real place in the life into which I was born, a real home.
I don't have the Teela toy any more.
It eventually fell apart from wear and tear, at an airport.
But even as I disposed of the toy way back then, I've tried since then to hold those virtues it represented in my heart, keeping that spirit alive in a way that outlasts any plastic toy.
As I think about those virtues, I'm reminded of a quote spoken by the Teela in the live-action MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE movie.
In the film, Teela is portrayed by actress Chelsea Field.
Her portrayal of Teela is rather playful, focusing on the character's no-nonsense warrior spirit and how that's at odds with Earth customs.
The quote I think about from the movie is when Teela says "Don't say goodbye. Say 'Good Journey.'" She's talking about how people shouldn't see a parting of the ways as the end of the story, or as an end to friendship. I think of my childhood like that - I've never said "goodbye" to it; I still find joy in these characters, in their adventures. I think of myself simply going on the long journey of my life, with my past as much a part of that journey as my future.
Wherever that journey takes me, I think it's worthwhile to hold on to the virtues I learned when I was young, and keep them alive. After all, those virtues have served me well so far in my life.
I don't owe these virtues to Teela. I owe them to myself, for forging them out of my experiences and maintaining an outlook on life that's ultimately about measuring myself by my successes more than my failures; it's what I think is the mark of a warrior.
And my journey keeps going - and I find myself thinking about another time in my past that was one of my first big journeys out into the world in a way that put me into a state where I felt like I was on my own.
My school sent us all to a week-long campground for our "Outdoor Education" week, and we all had to bring a sleeping bag, I had only one in mind.
And although I certainly didn't make a point of telling anyone about it, I was a little less homesick because I knew I had to be brave. Because there on the sleeping bag was Teela, and by sleeping inside, I wasn't a scared kid away from home for an extended period for the first time.
I was on the plains of Eternia!
And I was a WARRIOR GODDESS!
I like to think I still am.
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