Growing Pains

PART 2:


PART 3:


"We do not stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."
          -George Bernard Shaw

Life is full of firsts.

Your first job.  Your first child.  Your first marriage.  Your first car.  Your first kiss.  Your first day at school.

And your first imaginary friend.

Who can ever forget their first imaginary buddy?  I still remember when I was a kid and the first thing I did when I got a new action figure was tear it right out of the box and go on all sorts of wacky world-saving adventures with all the other toys in my collection.  I always looked forward to buying new toys with my allowance and couldn't wait to get them home, give them personalities, and spend hours having Superman join forces with the Exo Squad to save Earth-2 from the forces of Megatron and the Cutesy Tea Party of Doom.

I often had friends and family think I must be miserable being alone in my room all the time as a kid on weekends, but I always felt I was in the best possible company I could be around.  In fact, I don't think the case can be otherwise.  Interacting with real friends and meeting new people is a very valuable and worthwhile experience, but the imaginary friends you create and play with can understand you on a level more intimate than your friends or even your own family...because they are literally a part of you.

Yet as people grow up and transition into adulthood, they stop playing with these imaginary friends.  The responsibilities and obligations of life kick in, many are forced to abandon non-essential activities and possessions to do whatever is necessary to get by, or sometimes people tell themselves they're too old for such childish things anymore.  As a result, the imaginary friends people grew up around and played with get pushed off to the side and abandoned.

It's a rather cruel irony that the first friends that get abandoned are often the very first ones that we make, and the ones that truly understand us the most.  I can only wonder what these imaginary friends must feel at being abandoned so suddenly, which I suppose is what compelled me to draw something like this.

I guess the main theme here is that life is great for a while until it gets difficult as heck.  No changeling queen, magic-devouring centaur, dark crystal king, lord of chaos, lunar nightmare, or great and powerful trickster will ever hit you as hard as the struggle of growing up and dealing with life.  Once you begin the often surprisingly abrupt transition to adulthood, life will suddenly beat you down with new challenges that make it impossible to enjoy it the way it was back in a more innocent time, when you didn't have bills or student loans hanging over your head, or a mortgage or car loan to pay off.  It will at times destroy your happiness, your well-being, and your innocence.

And as was the case with Twilight and Smarty Pants, the harsh responsibilities of a sudden onset of adult life may even force you to abandon your inner child, no matter how desperately you would like to get in touch with her again.

But it doesn't always have to.  I don't think one can ever be too old to enjoy things that society would generally play off as childish.  It might feel silly as an adult to play with Transformers or Marvel superhero action figures, or watch episodes of My Little Pony, Adventure Time, or Steven Universe at first, but these valuable experiences can whisk us off to fantasy realms where the chains of reality are cast off and anything is possible.

Just because society believes something to be immature is by no means a justification as to why you shouldn't at least experience it for yourself.  Nor should anyone be afraid to partake in, or say they enjoy, "childish" things.  Because these imaginary indulgences fuel the imagination and allow us to be kids again, in the face of an increasingly harsh and overbearing reality, even if just for a moment.  And at any age, that experience is something special.

So the next time you're compelled to leave your old dolls, action figures, or cartoon episodes to gather dust in the attic or sell at your next garage sale, think about how you felt having all those grand adventures together way back when.  How awesome it felt to take that toy out of its wrapper and hold it in your hand for the first time.  And don't be afraid to go on just one more grand adventure together, or watch just one more episode.

Because hasn't your own Smarty Pants waited long enough for her next study session?