Life would be so much easier if I were a cartoon character.
“Did you always feel that way?” Dr. Whiteside prompted. Dr. Whiteside was my analyst, or as I liked to refer to her to my girlfriend, my analist.
“No,” I replied. “Thirty years ago, during the golden age of underground radio on the FM dial, the era of album oriented rock and roll — before they edited the 17 minute version of Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida down to three and a half minutes to accommodate jingles, contests, weather and traffic reports, along with a six-minute block of commercials, there was a segment on WWWW (or as they promoted themselves, ‘W-4’) — where they asked listeners which cartoon character they’d sleep with if they could: Betty Rubble or Wilma Flintstone?” I paused, wondering if Dr. Whiteside would be curious enough to ask which would be my cartoon of choice. She didn’t ask; but this was my 50 minutes and I was, after all, paying her to listen. I went on, wanting to believe she thought my choice was important. “I scoffed at the notion of either one. Why would I want to sleep with a piece of celluloid? This was 30 years ago, before Jessica Rabbit appeared on the scene — she wasn’t bad, she was just drawn that way.”
“So you’d prefer a virtual relationship?”
I thought about her question for a moment. The notion hadn’t occurred to me, but that, too, was what I was paying for: questions from a different perspective. I shook my head but filed the question away for introspective analysis on my own time.
“I’m nearing 50,” I said, feeling a sort of phony wisdom, as if I were the first person to have ever reached this plateau. “Life is beating me down. As a youth my dad always told me, ‘Son, you only live once, and I don’t think you’re going to make it.’”
“You feel he was setting you up to fail?”
I waved aside her assessment. “He said it tongue in cheek, but his point was, or at least I took it to mean, that none of us makes it out of this life alive; Dad certainly didn’t.”
“You see similarities between your life and your father’s?” she asked.
I shook my head; she still didn’t see where I was heading. “I managed to outgrow the geekiness of my teen years to turn a few heads in my 20s and 30s. Hell, my girlfriend tells me I’m still capable of walking into a Meijer grocery store — where they subscribe to the Parking Lot channel — and turn a head or two. But in youth I viewed myself as invincible. Every day was an adventure and I risked more. I grew stronger, more confident, until I couldn’t help but believe that it would always be so. But at some point I found that, like the sun, I’d reached my zenith and was now sliding slowly toward that horizon I’d always seen as so distant. The one behind which my dad disappeared.”
Dr. Whiteside nodded, as if I’d said something profound.
“When did you realize this?”
“Sometime in my late 30s I think. But it wasn’t until I turned 43, after my dad died, that I realized it had happened: I was never going to play major league baseball except in my dreams. Actually, the last baseball dream I had I was playing minor league baseball for a team in Chicago, still trying to catch up to that high inside fastball for which I was always a sucker.”
“And how does this relate to Betty and Wilma?” Dr. Whiteside asked. So she really had been listening.
“You read Archie and Jughead when you were a kid?” I asked. She nodded. “Their problems in school or with girls always seemed trite to me. Somehow I must’ve realized, even as a kid, that their troubles weren’t real; well, maybe they were but their resolutions, which always managed to come within a finite number of pages, I knew wouldn’t always work in the real world. Might isn’t always right (nor is the obverse always true ), playing fair doesn’t always net you the promotion, nor do you always end up with the Betty or Veronica of your dreams. Maybe that’s why I always went for Marvel Comics — Peter Parker got bit by a radioactive spider and developed spider powers, Superman feared only kryptonite. I loved it all for what it was: escapism. It’s important as adults to hold on to dreams of escape.”
“You feel the dreams of your youth will never be realized.”
I cringed. Dr. Whiteside wasn’t asking, she was telling me. I sensed the session was drawing to a close. But I wasn’t done.
“Pinky and the Brain’s incessant efforts at world domination invariably fail, yet I admire Brain’s adamancy in answering Pinky’s same question at the end of every episode, ‘What are we gonna do tomorrow night, Brain?’
‘The same thing we do every night, Pinky — try to take over the world.’
“Yosemite Sam always had something or other setting his pants afire; Wile E. Coyote, with those ACME mail-order rocket powered roller skates strapped to his paws, always managed to speed off the edge of a mesa to disappear into the desert floor below in a mushroom cloud of dust. But in the next scene they were always back — Sam’s biscuits might be burnin’ but his stones never scorched; Wile always walked off the accordion effect of those sudden stops after falls from great heights. They always came back, ready to eat bear, although it was always the bear that ate them.” I paused a moment, glanced at the clock on Dr. Whiteside’s desk. “I was a lot like Sam and Wile E. in my youth — always bouncing back in the face of adversity.”
“Bouncing back has gotten a lot tougher for you?”
I nodded. “Trying to keep up with technology and stay ahead of the kids who are coming out of college smarter and more resilient than I. Eventually I won’t be able to keep up in a world that’s changing faster and faster and becoming smaller and smaller.” I looked down at my hands, flat on my thighs and wondered whether my arms were really getting shorter or had micro technology merely gone insane. Not that it mattered: I still needed reading glasses. I shook my head. “I know I won’t be able to keep up. I watched it happen to my dad, and I think it’s going to happen to me a lot sooner than it did to him. Not that he was any smarter than me, but life during his time moved at a much more leisurely pace. The snowball of my life is picking up momentum.”
Dr. Whiteside glanced at her watch.
“Brain’s schemes inevitably fall short,” I said. “Sam never bags Bugs, and Wile never snares the Roadrunner.”
“Yet they never stop trying,” she offered, as if that were some sort of consolation.
“I envy them that.”
“We have to stop for today,” Dr. Whiteside said, and I was reminded yet again that life’s problems, mine at least, couldn’t be solved within a finite number of minutes. Yeah. Life would be so much easier if I were a cartoon character.
“Did you always feel that way?” Dr. Whiteside prompted. Dr. Whiteside was my analyst, or as I liked to refer to her to my girlfriend, my analist.
“No,” I replied. “Thirty years ago, during the golden age of underground radio on the FM dial, the era of album oriented rock and roll — before they edited the 17 minute version of Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida down to three and a half minutes to accommodate jingles, contests, weather and traffic reports, along with a six-minute block of commercials, there was a segment on WWWW (or as they promoted themselves, ‘W-4’) — where they asked listeners which cartoon character they’d sleep with if they could: Betty Rubble or Wilma Flintstone?” I paused, wondering if Dr. Whiteside would be curious enough to ask which would be my cartoon of choice. She didn’t ask; but this was my 50 minutes and I was, after all, paying her to listen. I went on, wanting to believe she thought my choice was important. “I scoffed at the notion of either one. Why would I want to sleep with a piece of celluloid? This was 30 years ago, before Jessica Rabbit appeared on the scene — she wasn’t bad, she was just drawn that way.”
“So you’d prefer a virtual relationship?”
I thought about her question for a moment. The notion hadn’t occurred to me, but that, too, was what I was paying for: questions from a different perspective. I shook my head but filed the question away for introspective analysis on my own time.
“I’m nearing 50,” I said, feeling a sort of phony wisdom, as if I were the first person to have ever reached this plateau. “Life is beating me down. As a youth my dad always told me, ‘Son, you only live once, and I don’t think you’re going to make it.’”
“You feel he was setting you up to fail?”
I waved aside her assessment. “He said it tongue in cheek, but his point was, or at least I took it to mean, that none of us makes it out of this life alive; Dad certainly didn’t.”
“You see similarities between your life and your father’s?” she asked.
I shook my head; she still didn’t see where I was heading. “I managed to outgrow the geekiness of my teen years to turn a few heads in my 20s and 30s. Hell, my girlfriend tells me I’m still capable of walking into a Meijer grocery store — where they subscribe to the Parking Lot channel — and turn a head or two. But in youth I viewed myself as invincible. Every day was an adventure and I risked more. I grew stronger, more confident, until I couldn’t help but believe that it would always be so. But at some point I found that, like the sun, I’d reached my zenith and was now sliding slowly toward that horizon I’d always seen as so distant. The one behind which my dad disappeared.”
Dr. Whiteside nodded, as if I’d said something profound.
“When did you realize this?”
“Sometime in my late 30s I think. But it wasn’t until I turned 43, after my dad died, that I realized it had happened: I was never going to play major league baseball except in my dreams. Actually, the last baseball dream I had I was playing minor league baseball for a team in Chicago, still trying to catch up to that high inside fastball for which I was always a sucker.”
“And how does this relate to Betty and Wilma?” Dr. Whiteside asked. So she really had been listening.
“You read Archie and Jughead when you were a kid?” I asked. She nodded. “Their problems in school or with girls always seemed trite to me. Somehow I must’ve realized, even as a kid, that their troubles weren’t real; well, maybe they were but their resolutions, which always managed to come within a finite number of pages, I knew wouldn’t always work in the real world. Might isn’t always right (nor is the obverse always true ), playing fair doesn’t always net you the promotion, nor do you always end up with the Betty or Veronica of your dreams. Maybe that’s why I always went for Marvel Comics — Peter Parker got bit by a radioactive spider and developed spider powers, Superman feared only kryptonite. I loved it all for what it was: escapism. It’s important as adults to hold on to dreams of escape.”
“You feel the dreams of your youth will never be realized.”
I cringed. Dr. Whiteside wasn’t asking, she was telling me. I sensed the session was drawing to a close. But I wasn’t done.
“Pinky and the Brain’s incessant efforts at world domination invariably fail, yet I admire Brain’s adamancy in answering Pinky’s same question at the end of every episode, ‘What are we gonna do tomorrow night, Brain?’
‘The same thing we do every night, Pinky — try to take over the world.’
“Yosemite Sam always had something or other setting his pants afire; Wile E. Coyote, with those ACME mail-order rocket powered roller skates strapped to his paws, always managed to speed off the edge of a mesa to disappear into the desert floor below in a mushroom cloud of dust. But in the next scene they were always back — Sam’s biscuits might be burnin’ but his stones never scorched; Wile always walked off the accordion effect of those sudden stops after falls from great heights. They always came back, ready to eat bear, although it was always the bear that ate them.” I paused a moment, glanced at the clock on Dr. Whiteside’s desk. “I was a lot like Sam and Wile E. in my youth — always bouncing back in the face of adversity.”
“Bouncing back has gotten a lot tougher for you?”
I nodded. “Trying to keep up with technology and stay ahead of the kids who are coming out of college smarter and more resilient than I. Eventually I won’t be able to keep up in a world that’s changing faster and faster and becoming smaller and smaller.” I looked down at my hands, flat on my thighs and wondered whether my arms were really getting shorter or had micro technology merely gone insane. Not that it mattered: I still needed reading glasses. I shook my head. “I know I won’t be able to keep up. I watched it happen to my dad, and I think it’s going to happen to me a lot sooner than it did to him. Not that he was any smarter than me, but life during his time moved at a much more leisurely pace. The snowball of my life is picking up momentum.”
Dr. Whiteside glanced at her watch.
“Brain’s schemes inevitably fall short,” I said. “Sam never bags Bugs, and Wile never snares the Roadrunner.”
“Yet they never stop trying,” she offered, as if that were some sort of consolation.
“I envy them that.”
“We have to stop for today,” Dr. Whiteside said, and I was reminded yet again that life’s problems, mine at least, couldn’t be solved within a finite number of minutes. Yeah. Life would be so much easier if I were a cartoon character.
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