The natural unnaturality of childhood
Recently I put myself to — finally — watch Clarence, this show from the mid-2010's generation of Cartoon Network programming, and it has been a truly enlightening experience, for I am only now discovering this wonderfully absurd thing that is being a child.
You see, my childhood was very different from most people's. Showing signs of prodigy very early, the first ten years of my life were spent in front of books and musical instruments, living all my days on a very tight schedule, amongst a whole pack of grown ups trying to build in and from me a genius of sorts. They'd never cut me any slack, and the least of a child-friendly fun I could have were the 40 daily minutes of videogames my mom plead them to let me play, but with time even that felt more like an obligation than anything, much as the recreational hour in a prison. But I was fine with all that, with all the labor. After all, it was the only reality I knew, barely having any contact with other children my age, or even the world outside. All I knew was my routine and nothing else, and the people who were against that life I lived, not having the power to change the world around me, changed me instead, corrupting my self with the best of the worst and, in secret, roots started to pierce my soul, growing into the tree that is my personality today. And after all those years, when I finally moved from that house of maniacs seeking prestige at my expense, and tasted freedom for the first time, I wasn't a child anymore; that new found liberty was much more connected to the wannabe rebellion of the punk youth, which I already had some affinity to due to that early contact previously mentioned, and it was with alcoholic comas, mosh pits, orgies and pornography marketplaces that I came to discover the world as it is, as if I had taken a full hiatus after being born, before actually living life. Little did I know at the time, but I had missed the best part of being a human.
My first contact with Clarence was at the very first showing of the pilot on Cartoon Network, and I must say, I was completely terrified. You see, my pre-teen to teenage years were spent reading all the young-adult novels I could find, and watching all the cartoons I missed as a kid, and being this real freak for anything animated, at the time I had not yet seen something so strange and out of place, figuring I knew every single mainstream cartoon formula. Suddenly I was in front of something completely unpredictable; a whole new reality; an actual child.
That show freaked me out so much that on the day of release I could not finish the first episode. Never had much a scare for anything horror-related, but that thing terrified me like nothing else before, and became one of those memories you try your best to forget, but is always there somewhere in the attic of your mind. And how many years have passed now? Six? Eight? Near a decade maybe, and only now have I gathered enough experiences under my belt to stomach the realism that Clarence portrays.
This realism I'm talking about is exactly the seller of the show: kids being kids. Kids being themselves doesn't matter how radical, how wrong, how grave it may be — and it is much of all that. Children are the richest pool of human instincts, like a construction site with way too many materials, but everything is there, everything that will turn them eventually into grown ups. But the same way a monkey doesn't know how to drink hot cocoa out of a mug, kids don't really know anything for themselves, even though they carry all the knowledge in the world. It's all potential, vaguiness, rawness; the "tastes sweet — I'm gonna eat it — doesn't matter if I got it from a dumpster — what is a dumpster anyway?". When you are a kid, as you explore the world around you and gather experiences, good and bad, happy and sad, fun and boring, all of it is development; the foundation for the future you that YOU construct yourself. Your parents, your family, they're there as moderators, keeping you in the right way, but they're never the creator of your own reality. And that's the whole point of childhood.
Now it's easy to see why Clarence scares me so much. I never had that. All the potential I had was shaped as noticed, on the spot, by a bunch of hands that were not mine. As a kid, I was never the "king of the world" as in the show's intro, being a mere tool in someone else's plan, having my innocence abused by whom knew much more than I about everything I didn't had a chance to understand by myself. And then, when the chance showed itself, it was already too late, I was already too old and dirty. The image of a child I had before Clarence was the one presented in Home Movies, the Brendon Small amateurish genius —, exactly how I was as a kid. I expected every child to be like that, to have standards, to know their shit, to play piano at tea parties and cook whole meals, to write concise stories and read french romances with their grandpa. I held kids in the same high regard adults held me up to, and that knowledge was confirmed by the cartoons I watched. The kids were leaders, deck hands, they knew their position and importance, they learned things, they became better — like someone that thinks high of Augusto Cury —, and any flaw was the writer's fault, not the character's. I thought I knew how the world works, thought I knew everything, but a missing link jumped out of the manhole, and in their gaze I found my own flaws. Clarence, the character, was a real kid. I wasn't, never been, but everyone else was at a point in their lives. I was the wrong one, the freak, the man-made "person".
I ran, then, cried and told myself it wasn't my fault, and it really wasn't. I wasn't meant to be a real child, but in a way have always been one, just different. In this almost-a-decade of skipping out on Clarence I understood that being a child is much more than eating trash and breaking bones, it's about innocence and potential and having fun with it. Learning without studying, living life as you want to live, creating and being creative, getting messy and not worrying about it; and of course, having fun with it all. And now that I'm watching Clarence, I can finally experience some of all that I missed back then, same way I'm going to experience much when I have my own kids, my own little devilish subjects to play all day and read fun stories and sing songs with, and raise to be great people.
Guess my shelves are getting bent. Afraid they will break.
I noticed this website is getting quite some traffic for some reason. Want to talk with me sometime? I'll be putting an e-mail in the about section.