Yukon Ho!

My memory isn’t great, but when I was a child, I remember reading Calvin & Hobbes. Looking back on it, it was pretty weird growing up without TV or internet, smack bang in the middle of a giant forest. The Indispensable Calvin & Hobbes was bigger than my entire torso, and no matter how many times I stayed up way past my bedtime with a flashlight, under the covers on the top bunk of my bunk bed, the pages never seemed to run out.

I always feel like I’m caught in the middle of a misbegotten game of telephone. I don’t have memories, really, but I remember the facts, as clean and simple as words on a page. As if someone else relayed to me what happened. This is by choice, mind you, by choice, and it was necessary, I tell myself, it was necessary. I’m a Nowhere Man by choice. I have no childhood photos, no childhood friends, no home movies and no family portraits and no newspaper clippings and no old Christmas presents and no big oak tree at the end of Ebony Lane where I used to play and no relatives to tell me stories about myself. The record of my life began when my Facebook account did–in my sophomore year of High School.

And even if I did have a little window where I could pull back the shutters and peek through the curtains at a younger me, I’m not certain I would recognize him. I used to think that I would never, ever forget the pain of what happened to me. As I got older, and I bent my entire mind towards forgetting, I realized, gratefully, that I was wrong. You can actually forget it all–just under two decades of abuse and torment, gone, poof! You wouldn’t forget the facts, mind you–it’s important to remember the facts. But the experience you can forget.

Sometimes the experience can come back, unbidden, angry. Sometimes you forget instead that you’re sitting in the middle of a classroom in Boylan and not in a doghouse in the winter during a snowstorm because your Mom locked the doors.

When I read The Yukon Song from Calvin & Hobbes, I’m reminded of a lot of bad things, but I’m also reminded of how I felt as a kid, reading it. If I’m a product of my circumstances, Bill Watterson instilled in me a longing for adventure, a love for reading, and a desire for escape. Calvin and his tiger friend went back home, but I like to think I’m almost there. The Yukon.

Yukon Ho!

-M.C.