I used to write “the story behind the cartoon” and some friends seemed to enjoy it. I got busy doing other things, and never found time for it.
About a year ago I wrote a cartoon that (I had a feeling) not many would “get”, and I don’t say that condescendingly. I would not have gotten it if someone else had written it.
I realized after publishing it on my website, unless someone knew me growing up, they might not have a clue. Even my wife Lee, who I’d not met until adulthood sort of scratched her head.
Every now and then someone looks at it, and moves on to another less complicated one.
The story behind this cartoon that I titled “Recalculating” is more of a self-serving lump of nothing than anything with a moral or lesson. (Not that cartoons have to have morals or lessons).
Growing up, I was what one might call rebellious; but only symbolically. Yes, I went through some of the same things that others did, but my parents always had that “invisible leash” and I knew it.
So my rebellion manifested into hair down to the shoulders, bell bottom jeans, black lights and posters, smoking pot (and inhaling) etc.
I had no idea why that was my what my life had become, or even why it seemed attractive. I imagine peer pressure had a great deal to do with it, and that was that. I have to admit, at age 15 or 16 or so, shocking ones parents (in the late 60s-early 70s brought great pleasure to a “rebel without a clue” like me.
In my twenties (at some point) I realized I was going to have to learn to make a living. I was terrible at real estate (which was the family business), due to undiagnosed and misdiagnosed learning disorders, most of which were not even addressed until my 40s.
I learned that I could write, which was odd (given that I’d not read an entire book cover to cover until I was 28 (“Being There” by Jerzy Kazinsky). I later met Jerzy and got some “insider information” into the book and film. That was fun.
In my 30s I lucked into a cushy Washington, D.C. job and the world was rapidly going from 60s (hippie) to 80s yuppie, and I had to make a choice. Suddenly I was editor-in chief at a major radio network. I hesitantly chose yuppie as “that was the Washington way”, but never really gave up my 60s rebelliousness. I kept it in the back of my mind as I got up and made it to work early in the morning and left late in the afternoon. I jogged later and played Trivial Pursuit with my morphing yuppie neighbors on Capitol Hill.
I later opened a bus tour business that did well and sold it. I moved to California, mainly because I was burning out from the speed-of-light “Washington ways”. I figured L.A. would help me “chill” and get back to my hippie roots. That’s what I figured. I had failed at many more businesses and projects than those that succeeded.
By then there was no looking back. The days of “hippiedom” were gone, even in L.A. I had a friend who owned a car lot and he talked me into going to the auction with him and made a bid for a used Mercedes in very good shape, at the price I used to buy my junker muscle cars in high school. It was official. I was a yuppie, but still with the resentment of having to be one, as I’d invested so much into that long hair and so many nice tie-dyed shirts. Sniff.
The years went by, and suddenly my home in the burbs was swallowed by the Northridge Earthquake.
I realized at that moment I had made “so many plans” and the universe had other plans for me. If there is a God (and I believe there is) He must have been watching out, as the life I live now, is quite nice, I couldn’t have dreamed it, frankly….but it is nothing like “what I planned”. It’s healthy. I love my wife, Lee. We have similar interests. And like any couple, we don’t agree on every topic but that’s okay.
We both decided to get healthy (rather than give into being sickly, which would have been an easier route, we decided to expose ourselves to healthy things, people, get to know nature, and love life just as it is. That’s not easy (in the start) when one has been “chasing some unknown” for many years, but it makes a lot of sense now.
And every single screeching on of breaks, from as far back as I can remember in my life, and restarting, was nothing more than “Recalculating”; just like the robot-woman in our GPS.
Hence my best explanation for this cartoon…..”Recalculating”.
Rick London Syndication 