Do you remember The Transformers Show, which had characters named Starscream, Megatron, and Soundwave? That animated cartoon series won the esteem of my neighborhood, when I was a young man. It depicted battles between two races of robots: the Decepticons and the Autobots. This essay is dedicated to an Autobot: Optimus Prime.
Oh Optimus, you big silver cherry-red semi-trailer truck, you make transforming back and forth from humanoid-state to machine-state look so much fun. When you are humanoid, you appear to be a robotic man made out of chunks of metal; and then when you metamorphose into your vehicular aspect, you resemble a diesel-powered tractor unit combined with one or more long-haul trailers, which carry freight across the midwestern USA. You are the commander of the good guys’ side. Your main enemy, the Decepticon leader Megatron, looks sinister and dangerous: he has a lethal scope lens for shooting lasers (if I remember correctly) and a very angry metallic purple face. His voice is low, like the bass from a TR-808 drum machine (which is not a character from your show but I wish it were); whereas your own voice, Mr. Prime, is benevolent yet stern, filled with tough-love: almost too fatherly for my taste.
At a certain point in your saga, one of you two super-leaders got killed — I can’t recall whether it was you or your adversary Megatron — but then you came back to life, and you were stronger and had bigger cannons and more powerful ammunition. You descended from heaven with a shout, and we who were watching you from our TV sets at home got caught up together with you in the clouds, and we all met you in the air, like so many princesses hasting to marry their handsome Prince. And you were riding upon a Space Donkey.
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