I am still a day or three from returning to full-speed blogging so here's another rerun so you won't have wasted one entire click to come to this page. Here is what I did one day in February of 2010…
Friday afternoon, I did something I haven't done for around ten years. No, not shower…though I did that in the morning before the other thing. At the request of a friend, I went to an elementary school and talked to kids about cartoons. I showed them an episode of The Garfield Show and then I gave drawing lessons, teaching them how to draw Charlie Brown, Garfield, Scooby Doo, Bart Simpson, Spongebob Squarepants and an original character that we all created together. The kids, who were all around eight years of age, did quite well and some showed promise. It would not surprise me one bit if twenty years from now, some professional cartoonist came up to me at a convention and said, "Hey, were you the guy who came to my third grade class in 2010 and taught everyone how to draw Charlie Brown?"
I used to do this every few months because…well, I usually learn as much as the kids do. It's fascinating to watch them view a cartoon I've written and to see what they laugh at and what holds their attention. Unsurprisingly with kids this age, the physical humor gets more response than funny lines or situations…but some of Garfield's snide comments got immense laughs. More significant, I thought, was not what made them laugh but what held their attention.
The group I spoke to consisted of two separate classes crammed into one classroom. When I was ushered in, the instructors were spending a lot of energy, as they apparently do all day, just getting the kids to stop talking and listen. I have a fairly good memory of my schoolroom when I was that age and I don't recall us having quite that attention-deficit disorder. A generational thing? Too much exposure these days to fast-paced media? I don't know enough about children in and of this age to be able to say. I do know that once I told these kids I wrote the Garfield cartoons, I got the undivided focus of about two-thirds of the room and when I mentioned that I used to write Scooby Doo, I snagged the other third.
Well, why not? If you were that age, wouldn't you rather listen to a guy talk to you about Scooby Doo than about long division?
Another thing that surprised me: I was telling them how when I was their age, I'd watch cartoons on TV or read comic books of the characters I saw on TV…and then I'd teach myself to draw those characters. One of the kids asked me what the first one was — and while I'm not sure it was, I said, "This one." Then I turned to the whiteboard on which I was drawing and began sketching a Yogi Bear…about as well as I did when I was seven, I might add. As I started, I thought, "I wonder if they'll even know who this is." Yogi's not seen on Cartoon Network. He's on Boomerang a lot but I don't know how many homes get that…and there are no comic books.
Well, I needn't have worried. I was halfway through the drawing and everyone was screaming out, "Yogi Bear! Yogi Bear!" He was one of everyone's favorite characters. The clear fave by a wide margin, by the way: Spongebob. After I taught them how to draw Mr. Squarepants, they all wanted lessons on his supporting cast…and were disappointed that I simply don't know those characters. Several of them also do Spongebob impressions, one so well that Tom Kenny's job is in serious jeopardy. Sorry, Tom.
The first time I ever did this was back in '73. I was taking some morning classes at Santa Monica College and I was asked by a young lady who was in one of 'em. Afternoons, she was a student teacher at a nearby elementary school and she thought her students would benefit from a little chalk talk about cartooning. At the time, I wasn't interested in that but I was interested in the young lady. If she'd asked me to play Twister in the fast lane of the Santa Monica Freeway at rush hour, I probably would have.
I got there and watched a little of the class before I began. That's when I was told it was a "problem" class of kids with "learning disabilities" which mostly consisted of not paying attention to anything the teacher said and occasionally hurling items at her or each other. For an instant there, I wondered if playing Freeway Twister might not be preferable…but then I was introduced and when I started talking about cartoons and drawing, I suddenly had rapt attention. The teachers later said they had never seen that much focus. The kids didn't remain silent but like the ones yesterday, all their chatter was suddenly on topic, about the subject being taught.
Apart from the fact that the teaching assistant never did go out with me, the trip couldn't have gone better…a fact for which I deserve zero credit. Anyone who could have drawn the pupils' favorite characters could have done it, and many could have done it a lot better than I did. The point was that that kind of thing reached these kids…who, I'm horrified to realize, could have been the parents of the children I spoke to on Friday. That many years have passed. Still, the reaction was identical and it always is.
So is the moral of the story. The idea is to leave them with a number of thoughts. One is that this is a job. You can actually make a living drawing funny pictures or writing silly stories. Another thought is that you don't have to make it your occupation. There can be joy and satisfaction in just creating for the sake of making something.
Yet another is that whichever way you decide to go with it, it requires practice…lots of practice and dedication. The fourth thought is that it can be well worth it. I'm not sure classrooms ever do a good job of convincing children that things they learn there can have value to them later, possibly because so much of it will not.
Lastly, and this one is not so much a thought as a sensation…but it's just neat to be able to do that. Being able to draw Spongebob is like gaining a super-power. It might be worth investing the effort to learn to do it just so you can do it. I felt that way about drawing when I was a kid and also about magic and ventriloquism and a few other things. Even though I didn't go into those fields, I'm quite sure those interests had a role in getting me to where I am today. My father, who had no real marketable skills and always regretted it, used to say, "It's not that important what you do in the world as long as you can do something!"
Anyway, that's how I spent my Friday. And like I said, I think I learned at least as much as they did. Maybe more.