Sunday morning. A time I recall with something of a disgust from my childhood. I was always a bit depressed on sundays. The comics in the newspaper weren't very good, and the theme of The Simpsons, which only aired sundays here back then, made me just plain sad. Tomorrow, I would depart from home and go back to school. Back to thinking I'd never learn anything. As such, I always spent sundays soaking and moaning and being generally pissy about the state of everything. Nowadays when I look back at all the time I lost during those years being annoyed at the future, I can only think about one thing. I was really, really stupid and unable to be a regular kid in a sense. I allowed the hatred for school overtake any enjoyment I might have otherwise had. I like to believe that this is one thing I can atleast to some degree redeem through art. Not making it, but enjoying it. Looking at pictures the kids at the local daycare center paint when I do short substitute-jobs there. Watch films about childhood. Enjoy the fun of others while they can stil have fun. And most of all, read Calvin & Hobbes.
There are truly few comic strips in this world that I can think have truly stood the test of time. I still love Calvin & Hobbes. I love it more than ever. When I was a child I liked the fun of it. Watching this little rascal do all these crazy things with his pet tiger... It was good writing. The whole thing was, and still is, just plain fun. However, as I've gotten older, I can't help but feel somewhat sad from reading this. Maybe it's me being sentimental about a childhood I effectively believe I wasted playing Hercules on the PS1, but I truly think that this comic captures childhood with such vivid intensity that one really can't help but ponder upon his own past when reading these strips. The things I missed and the things I also experienced.
Hands up, how many of you had a pet as a kid? And how many of you had that pet die when you were a kid? Then you can relate perfectly to the Raccoon-strip series. It's a lot bigger than just this one strip, but you can google it or something if you wish to read it, as posting the whole thing here would serve no purpose. I had a pet rabbit as a kid. One day when I came home I noticed he couldn't move his legs any more. He was trembling in the cage and I was trembling all the way to the vet who had to put her down. Her name was Pöpö. It's a finnish thing, but it essentially means Germ. I don't know why it had that name. All I know is I loved that rabbit. There was only so little one could do at the age of seven when it came to mourning. The thing was gone. I had to live with it. We all had to live with these things. Bill Watterson's strips allow us to look back at all that. Our lives. My life.
I never got to experience something like that. I never knew my father. Now I understand why some people are so baffled upon hearing that I never had any interest in seeking him out either. They had this. I can admit to feeling jealous for them.
I wish I had a good punchline to end this blogging in. I don't. I just wish that if there are any of you here with prejudices against this comic due to it's strippy nature, I ask you to put those aside and read it for an album or two. It is a fantastic trip into the mind of a child, and most of all, into everything you might have experienced too. A proverbial trip down memory lane.
