For what it’s worth
By Jim Studer
At a Christmas family gathering I visited with a few nephews I hadn’t seen for a while. This triggered images of them as kids frustrating me by pestering me to try to find Waldo. Waldo was lost in a book of page after page of a mass of non-Waldo kids and adults. In the maze Waldo was supposed to be the one with the red and white stocking cap with a silly tassel and a red and white striped long sleeve shirt. He had round windowpane glasses and a walking cane. I guess it was once a candy cane that had lost its stripes to his shirt.
That got me thinking, a usually dangerous venture. Whatever became of Waldo? I imagine the creator with a sadistic mind who invented the game was a psycho who wanted to drive children and uncles out of their minds. I’ll bet the creator had such a Waldo child and staged experimental tests to see if the defenseless kid could actually be lost in a crowd. Waldo, if he survived, would now be an adult in his 50’s or 60’s.
What had grade school been like for a kid dressed in the same striped shirt wearing the same stocking cap and adorned with a magnifying glass-like set of spectacles set in dark rims? Can you imagine the bully boys picking on a defenseless red and white zebra shirted Waldo?
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