Eyes of a Tiger

I was poking around on the internet the other night, which isn't really different than how I spend most of my nights, and I saw something that...really affected me. I don't know how else to say it. An image, a cartoon done in Calvin and Hobbes style ink and paint to be exact. It was a picture of Hobbes, the old stuffed tiger that so many of us probably grew up with. He was in his 'live' form, how he always looked whenever Calvin was playing with him, his young imagination giving him that certain anima. Except...it wasn't Calvin he was playing with.

It was a little girl, blonde, in a purple or blue dress, running down a path in the woods with a great big smile on her face, one hand behind her clutching at Hobbes' paw. Hobbes wasn't paying attention to where they were running, though. He was looking backward, at a man who stood at the far end of the path. You couldn't really see his face, but you could see enough to know he was smiling as he waved goodbye. His hair was still blonde, but it wasn't spikey anymore, and it almost looked like it was starting to recede into his dad's old hairline. He still wore that same style shirt, red and black, but now it had graduated to a polo style. Calvin, all grown up, watching his daughter and his childhood best friend rushing off to have their own brand-new adventures.

I think it was the expression on Hobbes' face, the look in his eyes, that really got to me. As he looked back, the make-believe tiger seemed torn between his chance for new adventures with his friend's little girl, and not wanting to lose the memories that he -- and all the rest of us, let's be honest -- worked to create with her dad. It felt like there was no middle ground, no way to go back. In that single image, three entire life stories were captured. The little girl, full of wonder and magic and possibility, what ifs and could bes and tomorrows; adult Calvin, relegated to the background, to the past, a life of imagination and adventure perhaps already passed by; and Hobbes, the epitomal observer, a symbol of "Let's go play, NOW!" to literally God only knows how many kids.

I honestly don't know why I was so...touched? Disturbed? by this, but gods help me I was. Bill Watterson ended the Calvin and Hobbes comic back in '95 (or maybe it was '91), but this...this felt like a door slamming on my childhood. For a minute, it was like I WAS Calvin, standing in the background, alone and all but forgotten or ignored as the next generation forged ahead with MY toys. Christ, it made me feel...old. Am I old? Is 26 old now? I don't think so. I don't believe so. I CAN'T believe so. But right then, and even right now, I still feel it. I just can't shake this feeling that all my adventures are behind me, too, that even though it feels like there's still so much left inside me, it's all going to go to waste.

I don't know who drew that cartoon; it might have been The Man himself. Certainly it was powerful enough to have been his. But whoever it was, if you read this (I know they probably won't, but this IS the internet, and stranger things do happen) I guess I should let you know...mission accomplished. Whatever your purpose was in drawing that comic, whether just as a lark to test your artistic prowess, or to reach out and affect someone in exactly the manner I've just described, you certainly achieved it. Well done, damn you.

Well done.

Blue Skies and Memories

There's a lot of my childhood I really don't remember. A few scraps, mostly, and a few really crystal clear memories that probably happened totally different than I remember. But most of it's a blank. I guess it's because we really don't do much as kids. Who remembers what they might have done when they were five, right? And there's not really much to remember about school, so. I remember my teachers, and some of my class mates. Don't remember learning much; it feels more like I always knew all the stuff they had to teach anyway. Maybe that's just the brain's way of integrating it into your mind or something.

I looked up at the sky today, and it was the clearest, deepest, most perfect blue that I've ever seen. It wasn't just blue, it was Blue. The Blue, against which all other shades of the color are measured. It was really amazing in its way, one of those little everyday miracles that seem to blossom all around us all the time. I looked up into that sky, and I don't know why, but I started thinking about my childhood. Which led to the question above.

Later I was in town, and I stopped to get gas at one of the local stations. It's right next door to the school I attended until eighth grade; a lot of us used to skip classes or jump the fences during recess to walk over and buy drinks and candy bars. I was at the island, had the nozzle in the tank and was letting the pump do its work, and I looked over at this huge, I mean enormous old, gnarly oak tree that stood in the middle of the school's yard. It's been there for decades, I think; definitely it was there when I was five, and it seems like its always been the same size. I've never seen leaves on it. There used to be a second oak that stood maybe fifty feet away from it, same size, same dead branches, everything.

I used to sit under the shade of those trees some days. I'd skip a class or go out during the lunch break and just sit there, watching the clouds roll over. Sometimes I'd pretend that one tree was good and the other was evil, and I'd imagine the fights they must have had. Then when I got a little older, I imagined they were in love with each other, and how horrible it must have been for them to be so close yet so far apart. (Yes, I was one of those stupid kids who had a thing for tragedy and drama. Sue me.)

The second tree must have been cut down a few years ago. I never noticed until today, when I looked over and saw just the lone oak tree. I wonder if any of the kids attending there now have any stories about those trees. Or just the one. Or at all. It saddens me to think that maybe they don't. Nothing to be done about it, though. The other will probably be cut down in a few more years. But until then, it'll still be there. God knows nothing else on earth is gonna move it.

I'm gonna keep pretending the evil one was the one that got cut down. It makes me feel a little better, thinking that the good guy won. Even if its only for a little while.