Down with Garfield

If you've lived more than ten years on this planet, you may have figured out that the least creative, least surprising, least mind-taxing comic strip in print is Garfield. If you have made this assessment, you will be pleased to know that I began boycotting Garfield as early as 1983. Years previous, in second and third grades, I’d finished a few of my friend’s Garfield collections and felt comfortable with them. However, by grade 5, Garfield was an altogether too-accepted running dog of grade school mediocrity, and I was rapidly souring on it. Mrs. Hampton, my teacher, had Garfield and Michael Jackson plastered on our classroom’s every surface. They became a one-two punch of Orwellian brotherhood–”join us in predictable vapid loyalty to Mrs. Hampton’s mainstream tastes or just sit there deprived of fun.” Stephanie Long and Michelle Hawkins rubbed Teacher’s shoulders while I fumed. Garfield was not funny, and Michael Jackson was not cool. I wasn’t joining. Our big rewards were Garfield stickers and, for a recreational milestone after completing some big study unit or "fall quarter," we would be shown “The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller.” For Willard, MO in 1983, this was probably pretty progressive, but I was already poisoned. My only feeble resistance to their bogus mass-consumption was “not really being into it.”

Eventually this would lead to minor displays of “bad attitude,” and it finally culminated in my refusal to do a report on some topic because I felt all the good topics were taken by the students who were in the fold. When confronted over why I failed to complete the assignment, I said, “Because I thought it was a buncha shit.” This got me put in the hallway with, among others, Richard Peck, the mean kid who once pushed me down on the playground and ripped my favorite corduroy pants. So began the corrosion of my conformity, and my bitter, near-everlasting gobstopper of virginity.

Thanks Garfield, you unfunny piece of shit.