Winnie the Pooh and The Agony of Growing Up

As I write this, a new feature film version of Winnie the Pooh opens tomorrow. I come across as a cynical old hardcase a lot of the time, I know, but the very thought of Winnie the Pooh usually melts my insides.

I always say that the first book I read was Heinlein's Have Space Suit, Will Travel, but I read children's books before that. I was always a reader, from even farther back than I can remember. There was never a time when I was not in love with books.

Among my very favorite children's books were A.A. Milne's stories about Winnie the Pooh. I loved them so much. They were magical and they took me away from my dull existence into the perfect world of The Hundred-Acre Wood. I read the first book at least once before moving on to the rest. My memory is vague now, but I'll never forget reading the devastating finale to Milne's second book of prose stories about Winnie the Pooh: The House at Pooh Corner.

Again, most of the details are vague, but that ending. Christopher Robin has to go away and leave The Hundred Acre Wood and his beloved friends: Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo, Tigger, and of course the wonderful Winnie the Pooh.

I was a precocious child and I believe that I was about seven years old when I read it. Christopher Robin has a farewell party thrown for him by his friends, and at the end he has a lengthy goodbye with his dearest friend from the forest, Winnie.

At this late hour my mind mixes up the events in the books with the ones in the Disney movies, which were pretty good in their own right, but I remember how much the end of The House at Pooh Corner tore me up. I cried bitter tears. Tears that came and came and would not go away.

I was not a stupid boy. I knew what that ending meant. It meant that you grow up. You grow up and have to forsake the things of beauty, of magic you loved so much, and enter the gray, dull world of grown ups.

I didn't want to do it. I didn't want anything at all to do with it. I looked at the adults around me and I saw the defeat, the resignation of their dreary, repetitious lives. Their passionless existences. I hated, dreaded, the thought of it. Even then they were telling me to act more responsibly. To stop dreaming and start to make something of myself.

The truth is, people despise those that have that spark in their eyes. The dreamers; the ones that see the wonder beneath the surface. People hate imagination because it reminds them of their own inner deadness.

John Hughes knew about it. In The Breakfast Club, Allison says, "When you grow up, your heart dies". Who cares? I care.

McCammon talked about it in Boy's Life, too.

I've fought growing up my whole life. I still love monsters and I think everyone I've known for decades has given up hope that I'll ever reach maturity. I cut my yard when I can't put it off any longer. Every Saturday Morning I run out and try to spend my "allowance" on books and music and movies.

I had to go through the adult motions, kicking and screaming along the way. My bills get paid. I go to work every day. I bet the look of weary resignation on my face as I head out the door doesn't look much different than my father's did.

But I still dream. I still love monsters and space ships. I believe that love can conquer all. I created a website so I could reach out and contact others who have been forced to survive, but still have the hearts of children.

I understand that the new Winnie the Pooh has been animated the real way: It was hand-drawn. That's fitting for these stories. That other way to animate is cheating. Made up by grown-ups to do things faster and to make better profits.