Pep Talk #11: Frenetic
What are YOU doing for the holidays?????????
When you’re young, Christmas presents have the potential to alter the course of your life.
The best Christmas present I ever received was stuffed-animal Pablo from the show, The Backyardigans. I was 5 years old and Pablo was my favorite character. He was a blue penguin with a bow tie and a propeller hat. I slept holding Pablo in the crook of my arm for the next 10 years with no exceptions, even when my dog Iris chewed off one of his legs and cotton stuffing came out of the hole. He lost so much cotton that his round belly got skinny and deflated.
We’d known each other for so long that I figured there was nothing left for me to learn, until I googled Pablo’s character profile on Backyardiganspedia, which describes him as “a frenetic penguin who is more tightly wound than his friends” who suffers from “panic attacks.”
Now that I think about it, I’m not even sure that Pablo had a family. Or clothes. And, excuse me, why was he always in the backyard without an adult present? And why was he always playing imaginary games? What did he have to “escape” from?
It pains me to know that we probably could have helped each other. I haven’t seen him in a while, but I hope he’s found a healthy way to cope with what sounds like debilitating mental illness. Maybe he’s journaling. Maybe he’s on Prozac. Anything but weightlifting and Jordan Peterson.
Oh and here are some extra New York City cartoons:
