The power of art and words

Something we experienced decades ago can still provide us insight, and that insight changes as we age. It’s incredible.

WHEN I was growing up I was a voracious reader. Books, comics, the backs of the shampoo bottles while I was showering, anything was a good read to me.

Now I don’t think it came naturally to me. This urge to read was something cultivated by my father. He went out of his way to buy me comic books, probably thinking if I wasn’t going to read Tolstoy, at least I could read Transformers comics – which were basically just an ad by Hasbro to get kids to buy their toys (which worked, I had a ton of Transformers).

I’ve kept all the comics and all the books, re-reading them whenever I’m home and storing them in my bookshelf dreaming of the day that I’ll have a place big enough to shelve them in my own home.

A lot of the comics haven’t stuck with me, but I was always a fan of Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. And while the perpetual hard luck character of Charlie Brown has probably affected me in ways I don’t even understand, it’s the essays by Schulz that I always return to in my conscious thoughts.

On the 35th anniversary of Peanuts, Schulz wrote You Don’t Look 35 Charlie Brown, which really is nothing because presently the book would be titled You Don’t Look 62 Charlie Brown. But in this book Schulz went through a lot his motivations for some of his Peanuts strips. He outlined that he had started out with a strip called Little Folks, and the wisdom of one of his great aunts who doled out melancholy bits of wisdom like “we teach children to wave goodbye, because for the rest of their lives people will be leaving them”. Or something to that effect. I can’t be certain of the verbatim quote because I haven’t read this book in many, many years.

Every time I return to my parents’ home, my childhood home in Canada, I dedicate more time than is healthy scouring their basement for Schulz’s book. I check in boxes, I check shelves, I check with old clothes, anywhere it could be stored, but I’ve never found it. I have some recollection of putting the book aside in a safe place, and wonder if – like some Alzheimer’s stricken squirrel that loses its acorn stash – I’ve hoarded it in some now forgotten place.

Well, on this last trip home I returned to my beloved bookshelf to find it populated by a bunch of rock climbing books and yoga for beginners. These are the books of my father, and my books were nowhere to be found. I assumed that the books had been put in the basement but after a lot of sideway glances and noncommittal answers I realised the books had been thrown away, or sold, or burnt for all the good it does me.

Shocking.

Or perhaps not given that my parents have stored my books for me for the past 15 years while I’ve not lived in Canada.

This was when it hit me. My beloved

You Don’t Look 35 Charlie Brown was probably laying in a bargain book bin at some suburban garage sale. Again, I can’t blame my parents for that. I mean, I can only freeload storage with them for so long.

I got online to find this book and order it because the Internet has everything. And

I wasn’t disappointed. Within seconds of my search, I’d found You Don’t Look 35 Charlie Brown at several websites.

And that’s when I noticed the publication date: 1985. Nineteen eighty-five! Holy mother! Doing the math, I realised I’d received that book at the ripe old age of eight. I remember getting it and being disappointed that the book was only about half comics, the other half were these dense pages of type that I initially read only because I was somewhat of a completionist. But over the next few years, I re-read these articles whenever I would re-read the comics in the book, and they started making sense to me, giving me insight that I wouldn’t really use in those early teen years but that I find myself falling back on more and more as I get older.

And that’s how powerful words are. That’s how powerful art is. That something we experienced decades ago can still provide us insight, and that insight changes as we age. It’s incredible. The creator of Peanuts, Charles M Schulz, died 17 years ago. I never met the man, but his work stays with me, as I’m sure it stays with many others. And so I await the arrival of You Don’t Look 35 Charlie Brown like the arrival of an old friend.

I can’t wait.

Catch Jason Godfrey on Inspiring Homes on Life Inspired (Astro CH 728).