We moved a lot when I was a kid and on one occasion my new bedroom was on the third floor up a tight twisty old staircase. I was only allowed to bring my most prized possessions with me: some books, some comics, a box of cool rocks I’d found and balanced on top of all that was Tommy the Atomic Robot. One of my uncles gave me Tommy. Tommy was older than I was but still sorta worked. When you activated him he would light up and say “I am the Atomic Powered Robot! Please give my best wishes to everybody!”(At least that’s what I think he said, Tommy slurred his words most of the time.

I was trying to be very careful going up that stair but being a chubby little kid one of my belt loops caught on the end of the railing and put me off balance. I fell back a step and the entire stack of items slipped off the bottom-most book, tumbled down the stairs, and bounced out of sight below. I’m sure I yelled Noooooooo! as the stack slid out of my hands and poor Tommy hit step after step making musical mechanical noises all the way down.

I am here to tell you, that Tommy made the exact same notes on the way down as the opening notes of Land Down Under! I felt alternating waves of horror and surprise as he went ‘ping ping pingy ping!‘ all the way down and out of sight.

My mom was at the bottom of the stairs and heard me shout and saw all my stuff come crashing down towards her. She  shouted up “Are you alright?” I replied That I was, but couldn’t stop alternately laughing and crying over Tommy’s last performance.