MY LIBRARY

I don't read much at all. It's not that I don't have the time but I might not have the patience. In school, growing up, I would let every other classmate answer review questions about the chapter we were to have read the night before. I'd found a way to turn avoiding homework and class participation into an art form. I literally read maybe 20 lines from A Separate Peace and possibly a total of a chapters worth of The Great Gatsby and somehow managed to get Bs on both tests. Don't get me wrong, I am very literate and enjoy writing and appreciate good writers and understand how difficult it is to produce good writings, but I always had an internal monologue reminding me to not get involved with the reading part. Becoming familiar with an author's style always seemed intimidating to me and the 'good' ones usually have a lot of work out there. I couldn't allow myself to sort out the inner-workings of this strangers mind. A relationship perhaps too intimate would form between me and the author and this would surely be a burden to my sanity. Being assigned reading in school also made it seem like work. There was a thin line between a textbook and a novel and the two often teamed up to potentially ruin a sunny afternoon of fun.

Around 1990 I found Calvin and Hobbes. Bill Watterson's comic strip found a way to slip through all of those barriers I put up in my brain, my stubborn attempts to resist the influence of an author. Everything about it fit into my life like clockwork. The artwork itself became more and more refined as the years went by. It "matured" along with me into my teens. The kid and his tiger would literally poise themselves atop higher and higher precipices while expressing perfect observations of life before plunging down the treacherous hills in their little red wagon. We have all faced those moments of much needed clarity in peace and in chaos. Calvin seemed to dislike schoolwork and we frequently found him daydreaming in and out of class. How could I not relate? Hobbes, on the other hand, was Calvin's voice of reason and kept all of us grounded a bit in reality. It was all there in Calvin and Hobbes. I was there in Calvin and Hobbes! These days I often mention that I learned everything I need to know from that strip. Calvin and Hobbes was my textbooks and it's my collection of novels. Bill Watterson retired the strip on December 31st 1995 and sent me off into the world bestowed with this unique knowledge and perception of the entire universe to use at my disposal. Face it... Gatsby wasn't nearly as great.