My stepfather and I use Skype. Skype is a program on the internet which basically uses voice over IP, so if you have a microphone, speakers, and have downloaded Skype, then you can dial up other people who have a microphone, speakers, and have downloaded Skype and talk to them over the internet. All it costs is the cost of the connection you pay for (modem, broadband, etc), and the low-tech microphone and speakers.

You have to put up with some jitter and delay time in packets, sometimes. Occasionally the service just shuts itself off. But if you're rather cheap like myself and hate getting ripped off by exorbitant phone bills, then Skype is the way to go. Plus you feel like you're in an episode of Star Trek or something, as you just sit there and talk to the computer (minus the whoosing doors opening and closing behind you, of course).

My stepfather is a fun guy. In the early years we didn't get on at all, but over time we learnt the best kind of relationship to have is to be friends. And that we are. He's one of the few family members still speaking to me, and he always says things that make me laugh. He's also only 11 years older than me, which I often point out to Angus: "Dude. My stepfather's younger than you are."

It makes him squirm.

On Friday my stepfather and I were Skype-ing. I was well into the liquor (as one does when one has gotten their visa and then spent 2 hours on a conference call in which one sees the end of their career coming). Angus was on the couch beside me, surfing on his laptop via wifi (I have discussed wifi and VoIP in one post. Techno-geekdom, here I come). My job is a crushing ruin, we still had a holiday to book, my family is utterly at split ends, and the stress and depression over my job has me trembling like a love-lorn pigeon during Springtime, and what do my stepfather and I discuss?

Cartoon crushes.

That's right.

The first bit of animation you ever fell in love with and wanted to marry.

My stepfather admitted he dated a girl for a while in college who reminded him of someone. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he was both attracted to her and disturbed by his attraction to her. One day she turned around and faced him, and in that split second of realization as clear and unsettling as: Oh God, that's what they look like in the cold light of day, it dawned on him: She was the human epitome of Penelope Pitstop.

Penelope Pitstop. The cartoon woman of his dreams.

"How did she remind you of Penelope?" I ask, sipping some wine. "I mean, whenever you wanted to pick her up for a date was she always busy being tied to some railroad tracks or something?"

"It was her hair," he confirmed. "The jaunty ponytail. Did me in everytime. The relationship ended just after that, I couldn't live with dating my cartoon fantasy."

I thought about that. Being older than I was, he was treated to a whole array of cartoon characters that had panache. I mean, my childhood as pockmarked by Shirt Tales and Strawberry Shortcake, and who gets off thinking about a tiny raccoon whose thoughts appear emblazened on their shirts? And if people do get off on that, who admits it?

I mean, yeah-Monchichis kicked a clown's ass, they were oh-so-soft-and-cuddly, but that didn't mean I drooled over them or anything. Hello Kitty was cool in a "aren't those Japanese folk just a little bit nutty with the sparkly bits in the eyes", but it wasn't something to fantasize over. And Josie and the Pussycats? Oh yeah. They were hoes. All of them. It was hard to tell whom I loved the most before Solid Gold came on at noon, signalling an end to cartoon time and the peace and quiet that adults knew while their children were having their brains occupied.

The smurfs were ok, although I would've only gone for the stable and always-good-in-an-apocalypse Handy Smurf or-I admit-Papa Smurf. There was something vaguely sexy about Papa Smurf. I'm not sure if it's his red tights or his ability to lead small Smurfs in a single bound, but I found his absolute authoritarianism to be wholeheartedly sexy. Like the Smurf you would go for just as you became an adult.

Maybe it sums up why I still havea thing for older men who are in charge.

Hmm.

Sad. My childhood is marked by cartoons that exemplified anthropomorphism. Not like you can fall in love with that.

Oh sure. In non-cartoon time we had Land of the Lost, only Will, Holly and their dad were really dense and for some reason found it necessary to run screaming from the Sleestacks, only the Sleestacks move about as fast as I do the morning after a heavy drinking binge. Fraggles were cute but one does not lust after Muppets as that violates some kind of human rights code somewhere. But as far as cartoons went, we had nothing.

I didn't even have surreal crushes.

Then I remembered.

When I was 6 years old I had a record player that had a blue plastic cover that was designed to look like denim jeans. I had a 45 of The Little White Duck (not the one sung by Burl Ives, but sung by some other person). I would listen to it over and over and over again, carefully replacing the pennies on the inside of the record each time so they wouldn't fly off and knock the needle.

I swore I was going to marry the boy that sang that song on the record. It was perfection. My mother and father teased me mercilessly. I didn't care-I listened to those words knowing that this was the one for me, the one singing the most beautiful words in the world:

There's a little white duck sitting in the water.
A little white duck doing what he oughter...
He jumped off of the lilypad.
Then the little duck quacked and he said: I'm glad!

It was a symphony. It was poetry so fluid that not even Willy Shakes himself could have put it better. The way the words moved, the perfection of the stanzas, the slip even of the utilization of the word "oughter" (a slight I forgave). I played the record over and over and over again, so certain that his was the man for me.

It drove the others in the house crazy.

On reflection, I also suspect that the singer was a woman, which puts things in a bit of a different light.

Mystepfather and I discussed further. I did indeed have many crushes after that-I loved the Wonder Twins equally, until their fucking monkey Gleek just starting to get up my nose. My stepfather and I discussed this, too-who did the Twins think they were, muscling in on the Superfriends territory? Like Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dummer could rescue Batman. As if.

As a chick, I have to confess-I always found cartoon Batman gay and found Superman to be a wuss. I had zero respect for them. My stepfather hit the nail on the head when he said: I bet girls liked Aquaman.

Bingo. I loved the flippered boy. I thought he was the bomb-swimming underwater, getting the dolphins to do his bidding and saving the world that that somehow commanded a swam of mammals to save, seeing as how Superman was busy dicking around with his kryptonite again. Blond, charming, and with gills. He could hold his breath forever. He could stay down as long as he needs without needing to breathe through his nose or mouth.

As an adult, I admit the thought still has practical applications.

We laughed and talked and then Angus and I hung up to make some dinner. We make dinner, drink too much, and fall asleep wrapped up next to each other. On Sunday, we booked our tickets for our holiday which will be the first two weeks in March (whew).

I keep hoping Angus will learn the lyrics of Little White Duck, but the signs aren't looking so good so far.

If you feel like sharing your first cartoon crush in the comments, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to know I'm not weird or anything. Or weirder, anyhow.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 06:16 AM | Comments (25) | Add Comment
Post contains 1421 words, total size 8 kb.

1 Mark from Battle of the planets he was lush !!!!! drool

Posted by: sasoozie at January 24, 2005 11:11 AM (H8Lg2)

2 Princess Ariel from Thundarr the Barbarian. Oooh la la! Sexy, tough, able to do interesting things with blue fire...what more could a prepubescent boy ask for?

Posted by: Jim at January 24, 2005 01:43 PM (tyQ8y)

3 Actually, mine was more when I was older and it was from a video game rather than a cartoon. The main guy in the video game Tekken 3 is/was a hottie. I think they're already on Tekken 5 now and it's just not the same. The most amusing part is that...I don't play games like that. Instead, I'd pay for my best friend's boyfriend to play the game and then sit there drooling over his shoulder. Ah, the fun we had in our early twenties (I say this now a mere 7 years later).

Posted by: Jadewolff at January 24, 2005 01:43 PM (8MfYL)

4 Papa Land of the Lost was called Marshall. But he wasn't nearly as cool as Chaka or the Sleestacks.

Posted by: Ms. Pants at January 24, 2005 02:11 PM (Zg+AA)

5 Zia from The Mysterious Cities of Gold

Posted by: Michael at January 24, 2005 02:12 PM (/Jsts)

6 Without a doubt it's Daphne from 'Scooby Do'. Seeing Sarah Michelle Gellar play her in the live action was a dream brought to life

Posted by: Easy at January 24, 2005 02:25 PM (p4RVN)

7 Without a doubt, Derek Wildstar from Star Blazers. Even more frightening, I can still sing the theme song. I'm going to go hide now.

Posted by: karmajenn at January 24, 2005 02:33 PM (fx1A8)

8 No cartoon crushes, but real life (although almost cartoonish in hindsight) crushes... Wonder Woman - and later, Daisy Duke.

Posted by: Clancy at January 24, 2005 02:46 PM (JxYJc)

9 Spiderman, although I had no use for Peter Parker. In my teens, I had secret feelings for the male members of Thundercats. Although not animated, my true love will always be Tarzan.

Posted by: K at January 24, 2005 03:44 PM (l751k)

10 (first time poster, long time lurker!) Aquaman for sure and also Johnny Quest's father's bodyguard Race Bannon and Spiderman. Although, I got over my crush on Spiderman real quick when we went to a parade and they had a spiderman (live person) on top of a car ready to pounce and it scared the crap out of me - I think just seeing him come around the corner like that (I can stil remember that till this day) really made me think that he was real (I was about 4) and I ran for cover.

Posted by: Jennifer at January 24, 2005 04:09 PM (7wsEf)

11 I am not pleased to admit this, but Speed Racer. I know! Shut up!

Posted by: ilyka at January 24, 2005 04:21 PM (KYgQ9)

12 okay, no cartoon characters...but oh man - I had a crush on MacGyver. He could do ANYTHING. ;-) Now I watch Richard Dean Anderson on Stargate SG1, but only because he's a great actor. really.

Posted by: Christina at January 24, 2005 04:22 PM (axrWz)

13 Oh yes, good one, Jennifer - Race Bannon. Yummy. And oddly enough, Taz. I thought he was kewl when he spun around so fast.

Posted by: GrumpyBunny at January 24, 2005 04:24 PM (w3aVF)

14 Well, Betty Rubble of the Flintstones was kinda cute...and She Who Must Be Obeyed occasionally will come out with a real, honest-to-Gawd Betty Rubble laugh, so it must have meant something, innit? And then you had Veronica and Betty, the ones that used to hang with Archie... But I never really had a true Cartoon Crush as a kid. Now, Dr. Girlfriend on The Venture Brothers could change all that, if it weren't for the manly voice. Heh.

Posted by: Elisson at January 24, 2005 04:33 PM (QD7++)

15 Okay, out of curiosity I went to ebay and searched for "little white duck" and a bunch of children's records popped up. I wonder if you'd recognize the cover art on the record if you saw it?

Posted by: emily at January 24, 2005 05:03 PM (KyeL/)

16 Ems, I swear this was the cover: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=306&item=4042702939&rd=1 But the record I had was a small single. Not that I'd bitch or anything just to have my first crush crooning to me again. Jennifer-I can relate. I had a Ronald McDonald run-in when I was 4 that also scarred me for life. Fucking clowns.

Posted by: Helen at January 24, 2005 05:18 PM (uFX1z)

17 I always had a thing for the bad guys in the cartoons. You know, the good looking ones in a swarthy, dark, evil bad taboo way? Yeah. They fascinated me when I was kid. I secretly wanted them to get away with the damsel in distress. I desperately wanted to see what they'd do to her when they finally got her alone and away from the hero. Never worked out that way, though. Helen, you said: "who gets off thinking about a tiny raccoon whose thoughts appear emblazened on their shirts? And if people do get off on that, who admits it?" Furries! Do a Google search on Furries and you'll find more than you EVER wanted to know about people who really DO get off on thinking about raccoons and other small furry creatures. So much so that they dress up as plush toys and even have sex as plush toys. But I warn you; you will never be the same after you do this research. This information haunts me to this DAY!

Posted by: Amber at January 24, 2005 07:20 PM (zQE5D)

18 "Dude. My stepfather's younger than you are." Oh man I haven't laughed like that for a few days. You are bad, Helen. Just like me. No wonder I like you.

Posted by: Serenity at January 24, 2005 08:24 PM (qoFsi)

19 Oh, and Ilyka...nothing wrong with Speed Racer. I just bought a Speed Racer DVD a few months back. I'd let you borrow it if you promise to keep it clean.

Posted by: Serenity at January 24, 2005 08:26 PM (qoFsi)

20 Just stopping by to say hello. Yesterday, I asked a few of my readers to suggest a blog that they think should be the site of the day and deserves to be discovered simply because it is wonderful. Easy suggested your site and I can certainly see why. Great post and wonderful site...I MUST return.

Posted by: Michele at January 24, 2005 08:51 PM (Pr8K9)

21 That was a walk down memory lane, thanks. I remember the Slestacks, my husband still likes to amuse me and make their sound. I adored that show and of course Star Trek....

Posted by: cheryl at January 24, 2005 11:19 PM (jGybn)

22 I can't remember any cartoon crushes of my own, but when I met Big Daddy I had very long, red hair. Imagine my surprise after I married him and found out he owned his own copy of THE LITTLE MERMAID!!

Posted by: kalisah at January 25, 2005 12:55 AM (HRiMC)

23 I remember being quite enamored of the boys from Ghost Busters. Knowing me, probably Egon. Golly, I don't think I have ever left a comment here. Hi!

Posted by: Annika at January 25, 2005 06:25 AM (4B3UO)

24 Just one word ... WILMA!! What a woman *swoon*

Posted by: Best Friend at January 25, 2005 12:17 PM (/SIeu)

25 not weird at all, but you make me love you even more when I realize you know what the Monchichis were too! Oh the joy of sharing cartoon childhoods with someone

Posted by: stinkerbell at January 25, 2005 03:10 PM (m18uI)

Hide Comments | Add Comment