One must end the year on a note that is either upbeat or regretful. A heartfelt, “Meh,” just won’t cut it.
So here are a few particles of wisdom from the dustbowl of Mickey’s imagination.
The world is getting brighter… also hotter. If we continue to chill on the topic of global warming, soon we will be fricasseed.
You should definitely pay attention to your teachers. They are mostly old and cranky and undervalued, and it makes them sad when they realize that no one really listens to them.
I learned this from the poet Dylan Thomas, “Rage! Rage! Against the dying of the light!” He cursed death, and then he promptly went out and drank so much liquor, he died at a very young age. Thank God I have lived to be old.
You are also pretty much stuck with the face that you are born with, so you better get used to it, and it has many varied uses… especially in the comic sense.
And I would also like to re-iterate the wisdom of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery;
It is a bit of a disappointment to an artist to realize that what is essential is actually invisible to the eye… but I know it is true. Truth resides in words.
The only wisdom I truly possess is the knowledge that I am a fool.
Since I was a mere stupid boy, and before I grew up to be a mildly stupid man, I always yearned to have wisdom. And wisdom comes through experience and pain. Now, years later, I realize what true wisdom is… I’d have been better off without all that pain.
People are a lot like rabbits, except that they are not.
They can never eat too many carrots… unless they do. And then their skin can turn orange.
There is no beast as noble as a rabbit… except for practically every other beast.
Turtles are not as noble as rabbits. When you challenge them to a race, they cheat.
People really ought to be naked more. It’s true. If you can strip yourself down to only what is fundamentally nothing but you yourself… you begin to know who you really are. And it is not shame to let other people see. Oh, wait a minute! You thought I was talking about being literally naked? Oh, no! Metaphorically naked only!
One should be so opaque and obtuse that other people can see acutely right through you. It is the only thing that makes nonsense into sense.
And we need to sing and dance a little more than we do. A good song is healthy for the soul, no matter how badly you sing it. And even if you are old and arthritic like me, dancing a good jiggity-jig keeps the bones loose and the heart thumping.
Everyone needs to dance with their children. And talk to them. You can learn more from them than they can from you. They have more recently come here from the hand of God. And they know things that you have forgotten… and will need to remember before you return to Him.
I hope my anti-wisdom has not seriously screwed everybody up.
Catch a Falling Star 
How It Should Be… According to Mickey
My bicycle was red. It was red and looked just like the ones that Captain Kangaroo had in his commercials that we watched on a black-and-white TV every day before we walked or rode our bicycle to school, across town a whole long seven blocks away. After school I could ride it out a whole mile and a half to Jack’s farm with Bobby and Richard and Mark the preacher’s kid to go skinny dipping in the cold creek in Jack’s South pasture. Jack was younger than any of us except Bobby. And it was a golden age.
Spiderman comic books and Avengers comic books cost twelve cents to own, but they were forbidden. And as much as we sneaked them and passed them around until they fell apart, usually in Bobby’s hands, we never knew that Dr. Wertham had gone to Congress to make our parents believe that comic books would make us gay and violent. He was a psychiatrist who wrote a book, so even if you didn’t believe him, you had to worry about such things.
I believed in Santa Claus until 1967. And after I found out, I only despaired a tiny little bit, because I began to understand you have to grow up. And adults can lie to you, even if they don’t do it to be mean. And the world is a hard place. And the golden age ended in November of 1963 when JFK was assassinated.
In June of 1968 I rode my bicycle out to the Bingham Park woods, Once there, I took off all my clothes and put them in the bicycle basket, and then I rode up and down the walking paths through the trees with nothing between me and God but my skin. I had a serious think about how life should be. All the while I was terrified that someone might see me. I was naked and vulnerable. A mere two years before that I had been sexually assaulted and was terrified of older boys, especially when I was naked and vulnerable. But I was a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals and Bob Gibson. They were repeated World Series winners. And they beat the Yankees in the series in 1964. And more important than that, cardinals were the little red songbirds who never flew away when the winter came. You don’t give up in the face of hardship. You face the trouble. No matter how deep the snow may pile up.
And in 1969, the first man to walk on the moon showed that a Star Trek world was in reach of mankind. Star Trek was on every afternoon after school. I watched a lot of those episodes at Verner’s house on his family’s black-and-white TV. The Klingons were always bested or beaten because the crew of the Enterprise outsmarted them. You can solve the problems of the universe with science. I know this because of all the times Mr. Spock proved it to me not just by telling me so, but by showing me how you do it. And what you can achieve is greatly enhanced if you work together like Spock and Kirk and Bones… and sometimes Scotty always did.
So, what is the way it should be? What did Mickey decide while naked in the forest like a Dakota Sioux shaman on a spirit-quest?
JFK’s 108th birthday was on May 29th. Dr. Wertham has been dead for 44 years. Bob Gibson was 85 when he passed away in October of 2020. Captain Kirk turned 94 in March of this year.
The Golden age is long gone. There is no single set of rules that can clearly establish how it should be now. But I like those ideas of how it should be that I established for myself while naked on a Schwinn Spitfire in a forest long ago.
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Tagged as art, books, fear, golden-age, movies, nakedness, Star Trek