Sometimes when I can’t think of what to write, my mind wanders. It wanders to the strangest places; mostly to places and things from my childhood. A song I heard in a movie when I was eight my suddenly start playing in my head, and I’ll take a few minutes to seek it out. A song called “Take Me Home” entered my brain the other day, and I asked myself where it was from. Then I remembered: its on the soundtrack to an animated movie I saw when I was about seven or eight years old titled The Extraordinary Adventures of the Mouse and His Child. On the VHS copy my father had made of it, it was simply titled Mouse and Child. It came out in 1977, five years before I was born and it was one of my favorite animated movies. While looking it up online, I made a discovery: it was based on a children’s book by Russell Hoban. Then I made a second discovery: the library where I work had a copy sitting on the shelf.

When I got to work the next day I went straight to the shelf and pulled the book and checked it out. I started reading it to see if the story in the book and the story I’d seen in the movie mirrored one another. Then I went online and watched the movie. I hadn’t seen it in close to thirty-five years, and I had forgotten how violent it was. There’s scene where Manny the rat picks up a rock and smashes the Mouse and his child (they’re wind-up toys, by the way), and basically destroys them. But the scene itself is horrifying. Thankfully the story has a happy ending, but good grief! This is a children’s movie! Based on a children’s book.

Looking back at the story now, I realize this was one of many things that inspired my writing. As a child I often used my stuffed animals as characters in the stories I made up, and like the toy mice in the story, my toys walked and talked in my stories. But my characters were anthropomorphized: they were animals with more human qualities. Still, I’m pretty sure the idea of such things for me was partially inspired by this story.

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Stars overhead, silently glowing 

Tell me my name, where am I going?

There must be–

Out in the world it somehow seems I have to learn

Someone who’ll smile 

And know my name 

And who will take me home.

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Those lines are from the song “Take Me Home”. That little piece of nostalgia still makes my eyes tear up. Have a good day, everyone.