The True Point of Adulthood

I finally ordered some Kliban books online. Bernard Kliban is my favourite cartoonist, whose work I first encountered when I was a little kid. Incidentally, he used to be a regular contributer to Playboy magazine. I've wanted these books for nearly twenty years.

When I was nine I found some Kliban books in my dad's office, and when he caught me looking at them, he took them away and hid them in a closet. I waited for him to go to sleep, then snuck into the closet with a flashlight and notebook and spent several hours copying the cartoons (Apparently the composer J. S. Bach did this with sheet music by moonlight when he was a young boy, after his brother forbade him to play the music. So maybe I'm the Bach of nudie drawings or something).

As I lie on my bed reading my new books and eating from a gallon jar of M&M's, it occurs to me that a large part of my adult life is spent fulfilling my childhood wants. That's why fully one half of my desk storage space is devoted to candy. If I could talk to my nine-year-old self, I would totally rub it in her face.