Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Thinking straight

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Mike Peterson Published: October 28, 2011 1 minute 2 comments

Zach Weiner calls today's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal "a bit of an homage (to) the great Quino," which perhaps means it's a conceptual rip off, but, since I don't read a lot of Argentine comics, I don't know how much it's based on something specific versus being based on Quino's general pacing in his silent cartoons.

I do know that people who do read Argentine comics go on at great length about Quino's classic strip, Mafalda, but that, when they've posted translated versions of it, my reaction is that it's funny but either the age of the strips (it ended in 1973) or the cultural differences leave me a little cold.

I suspect the latter; one of the things I learned living near Quebec was that comedy doesn't always translate very well. During the annual "Juste pour Rire" festival there, the international acts tended to be slapstick or whimsical street performances, while most of the English-language stuff was stand-up delivered in club settings. The hostility of most Americans towards mimes is probably as eloquent a statement of this difference as anything else.

In any case, I enjoy SMBC and today's strip in particular. Encountering new ideas does expand the mind, and there is, in the morn and liquid dew of youth, some contagious blastments that are good for you.

I would quibble that the most interesting of those new ideas should — directly or indirectly — come from older sources that never fossilized into straight-line thinking. I have nothing against pop-culture, but feel it's a waste when that is all the source of inspiration a bright kid encounters.

My department head in college was not only an expert in the history and philosophy of science but an unrepentent Baker Street Irregular, and I've always enjoyed the company of those like Dr. Johnson's friend who, he said, "could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus."

There's nothing more fun than encountering a freshman (of any age) who has just encountered Rousseau for the first time or who is in the initial throes of admiration for Socrates' ability to frame arguments. It's as rejuvenating — in the literal sense — as having grandchildren, but in a more intellectual way: It reminds you of what your own mind was like when all those ideas were new and exciting.

And I suppose, as you get older, you do just sort them into your armory and they become, if not stale, at least unremarkable. Familiarity doesn't necessarily breed an active form of contempt but it can make things appear normal that once sparkled and shone.

Part of the trick of not droning on in straight lines lies in routinely exposing your kids to things like museums and art galleries and national parks in the first place, rather than simply taking them to Chuck E. Cheese and handing them a bunch of tokens.

First of all, it puts them in the habit of paying attention to see what you'll come up with next, and, second, it puts you in the habit of casually handing off things that might be interesting without overthinking it.

Which is to say, it establishes an ongoing conversation.

That, in turn, allows for moments of serendipity, like the time when my younger son, being about 15, was flying to England to see his mother. At a bookstore on the way to the airport, I pulled a copy of "Candide" off the shelf for him to take on the plane, because I felt he was old enough for the naughty bits and might enjoy the rest of the story as well.

Apparently, I was right, because he wrote about the book on his college application essay. I imagine that, had I handed it to him with more than "You might get a kick out of this," had I put it on a silk pillow and announced that it was an important, classic book that would blow his mind and change his perspective on life, he might well have put it aside for later or approached it with such reverence that he would look for symbolism in the amorous monkeys chasing naked women through the jungle.

And, after all, sometimes an amorous monkey chasing a naked woman through the jungle is just an amorous monkey chasing a naked woman through the jungle, n'est-ce pas?

In other news: I promised to take note when Caulfield started to reveal his Halloween costume. Here we go.