If you’ve never read Calvin and Hobbes, then I recommend it. I love it and part of the reason I do is because it reminds me of my childhood.
While most people love Hobbes, I’m all sold out for Calvin. In case you haven’t read it, Calvin is a mischievous 6 years old boy, with the biggest imagination in the world and who can’t stand school, homework, and girls. He’s got more energy than a nuclear plant when he plays “calvinball,” a ballgame that he invented and in which the rules change on every play. However, he can’t lift a single sock when it comes to clean his room.
But his passion is dinosaur and dragon drawings. He specializes in spaceships and dragon drawings, where they would fight ferocious battles in far away planets, destroying buildings and even leveling entire futuristic cities in their wake.
This obsession with dragon drawings gets him in endless trouble. Of course, he claims that the school’s principal and his teacher are attempting to limit his right to self expression and trying to make him be just one more of the millions of submissive masses, among other excuses. When Hobbes, his inseparable stuffed tiger and best (and only, as far as I can tell) friend, asks him what is that his teacher objects about his dragon drawings, he candidly replies “mostly my drawing them in math class.”
You would think that this is just some author’s jokes on children behavior. Well, I might think like that if it weren’t for the fact that the same situation happened to me when I was a child. When I was in art class, we were instructed by the teacher to make a drawing on any topic that we wanted. Well, I made not one, but two dragon drawings, and in one of them, they were fighting against some spaceships. My teacher not only disapproved my dragon drawings, but she also made my mother come to school and talk about my “inappropriate choice of subjects.”
Fortunately for me, my mother didn’t see anything wrong with my dragon drawings. She pretended to agree with my teacher, but when we were alone, she told me, “She’s wrong, but I don’t want you to fail the subject, so please, no more dragon drawings in class, if you want to make dragon drawings, make them at home. I don’t want to come here again to listen to your teacher’s foolishness.”
That was many years ago, imagine my surprise when I saw the same situation in a comic strip. Well, that certainly brought some nice memories.
Even though I live in a big city now, I was fortunate enough to be raised in the countryside. I liked watching the chickens and the horses and the pigs on my way to school and hear them making noise when I came back. I even had to work on the farm from time to time and, although it was tiring, I enjoyed it. Maybe because working there was an activity that I seldom did.
While most children preferred dogs or horses, my favorite animal was the bull. We only had one, and as I learned later, that was more than enough.
Now the bull might not have the grace of the horse, but it makes up for it with brute strength and an imposing presence. I was always afraid of him, I must admit, even though the one we had was a very tame animal. His horns were blunt, but I could still feel that he didn’t need them to beat me to a pulp if he wanted to.
Since I loved drawing, it was only reasonable that I started making bull drawings. I would sit on the other side of the fence (I was too afraid to sit on the fence as he could reach me there) and I would make bull drawings all afternoon. I remember I used to take a canteen full of water, my pencil and my notebook, and sit on the same rock every time.
I was always good at drawing, specially when I drew something that I liked. My bull drawings were so good that my relatives started to frame them and use them to decorate the house. I felt so proud every time one of my bull drawings was selected to be framed, since not all of them got that honor.
Of course, it might have been that my relatives were just being too nice to me. Since I stopped going to the country house many years ago because of family situations, I can’t see if they took down my bull drawings or they’re still there. I like to think they still are decorating the walls. It makes me feel better.
When I grew up, I had the opportunity to go to Spain, and witness one of their famous bullfighting rings. I was very sad and disappointed at seeing how they treated and killed the poor beasts for a show. I excused myself and left before it was over, I just couldn’t stand it.
Since then, I have used my bull drawings to denounce such a practice. I find it cruel and unnecessary. One time, I was very proud to see one of my bull drawings used as a poster against bullfighting in a magazine.
Of course, I can’t dedicate myself to that alone, but I hope that my bull drawings help so that one day, there aren’t any bullfighting spectacles anymore.
