Moriarty

When I was young, I had a Moriarty against whom my Holmes was pitted, as surely as I had found my Watson at that young age. I was matched against this fiend as early as I can remember. We were rivals of unimaginable import, no less so than Achilles and Hector or Batman and The Joker. Our battlefields were countless; the football field, the jungle gym, the backyard, the basement… We fought over the Super Nintendo controller, and we fought because we could. It was rivalry, it was sport, and it was a battle for the fate of everything that had ever mattered to me. And when one day he began to tear apart the snow fort that I poured my blood, sweat and tears into, it was a defense of honor and justice on a scale that would have made Superman proud. And we fought, beat and pummeled each other into the snow, fists flying, bodies tangled and snow rubbed into faces, a scene right out of Calvin and Hobbes, but what then felt more like The Battle of Hastings. I came out of it all victorious, and I stood there in my front yard, clad in all the regalia of winter, my cheeks flushed, my eyes bright and my heart thumping a triumphant opus. As the sun shone in that blue sky and the snow gleamed around me, I knew I had preserved my little kingdom in suburbia, I had held the city through the night.

It wasn’t just two boys solving their disagreement with fists, but something far greater than that, at least to me. Our conflicts always were more important than simple fights, because I never lived in the real world, not then, and not now. That lump of snow was my castle, and the pile of dirt in the backyard was the Hall of Justice. Roman Legions marched through my bedroom, and spaceships zoomed past as I stared up at those glowing neon stars on my ceiling. I always understood Richard the Lionheart better than Bill Clinton, and I probably still do. I never chose this rival, this nemesis, we were thrown together just like Arthur and Mordred. Since I can remember, I knew him, and we fought tooth and nail, and I gloried in the warfare. It was the stuff of legends and fairy tales to me. I despised him with every fiber of my being for my entire childhood, and then one day, all of a sudden, things changed… I was a freshman, and he was no longer there. I grew up, and moved on, but there was always that place in me that longed for that conflict, as assuredly as I needed comrades in arms.

It is important to have adversaries, to have someone to strive against, someone to push you and make you better. In conflict you strive to win, to fight your hardest against all odds because of that competitive fire burning inside of you. You do things that you never thought you could because of that need to be better, that need to win. In battle you become stronger, mind, body and spirit, even if it’s truly only mock combat. An enemy makes you learn and fight to succeed not with a helping hand, but with a kick in the teeth. Sometimes it’s the pain and hardships that turn you into a success, that make you strong. Sometimes it’s those bruises and black eyes that spur you on to be the best. Kennedy once said of the space program, “But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Besides, when you’re a kid, weaving tales in your mind about defeating your rival is just fun. So now I’ve found a faux-archenemy, a new foe to clash with upon the battlefields of my imagination. If in doing so, I’m crossing the Rubicon from reality to the realm of fantasy, so what? Is it all that different anyhow? And it is in this vein that I struggle to keep the imagination flowing, the world from sinking into some sort of drab, cynical Hades. Because, what would be the point then? With no struggles, no adversity, where is the thrill of living? Who cares to live without that excitement, without that conflict, without that fun?

And so I write, because its better that way, half in the world of fiction, and half in this condition called reality. Like Alice, half through the looking glass, and half at home. Sometimes I wonder if fiction and reality are so different after all. I always find that people believe the myths more than they believe the truth, anyhow. I’m told the quack of a duck doesn’t echo. I really don’t know if it does, perhaps I should just go find a duck and a cave. Or I could just sit here and write about epic battles and great conflicts and then maybe go watch some Looney Toons and see a fight over whether it’s really Duck Season or Wabbit Season…

At dinner recently, I brought up the subject of archenemies, and how I wanted one. It got some good laughs, some hilarious stories and some jokes. For, who in their right mind wants an enemy, anyhow? While I cannot vouch for the state of my own sanity, because… well, that’s just a Catch-22, I can say that it is the idea of an enemy more than the reality of one. I miss the thought of having someone to pit my strength against, and in doing so, make myself better. I need something to fight, something to strive for, and some hardship to overcome. How else would I know that I have accomplished anything?

I realize the real world is filled with enough hardships, conflicts and roadblocks for me to struggle with, overcome and in doing so strengthen myself. But in the end, the problems of adulthood simply do not hold the same romance as those childish fights. So for now I’ll just look back at all those struggles of childhood, remember the glory and the happiness that they brought, and know that I will always have them. And in the end, isn’t that enough?