There comes a time when boys are no longer allowed to go this crazy for the TYCO catalog

Only in a world in which Playboy model centerfolds don’t exist are adolescent boys allowed to get that excited about model train centerfolds in a TYCO catalog. Fellas, it’s time you started becoming men, and went beyond marveling at trains by the side of your pipe-smoking, sweater-vested old man.

True story: When we were the same age as these kids, and few friends and I went on a post-midnight excursion — through thick woods, deep snow and sub-zero temperatures — to the house of a classmate of ours. You see, his father kept a stash of porno mags hidden in his barn. These were the aggressively filthy magazines that wouldn’t even make it onto the back shelf of the newsstand, and were very much lacking the sheen of class that Playboy has always possessed. They were sub-Hustler. They were revolting. Anyway, we heisted a big pile of them — though not enough to be noticeable in the context of this guy’s humongous horde.

This was our Stand by Me — minus a young, unbelievably menacing Kiefer Sutherland. Heaven only knows what Ocean’s Elevenish lengths we would have gone to if he had had Playboys. The corollary, of course, is that we wouldn’t have risen off the couch for model trains.

Point? I don’t know. I just hope the statute of limitations of filthy magazine theft has run its course. I guess that’s it.