happy birthday to the cat!
Garfield Goddess
(originally published in Binibini)
Time check: 11:30pm of June 18. In thirty minutes, Garfield is turning twenty-five years old. A quarter of a century of rocking the cartoon character world, and slash about 18 years from that, of rocking my world. I have been anticipating this big day since March, and now that it's minutes away, I am all set to cartwheel and whoop for this gigantic celebration. I bet my lone dollar that no other fan is more excited in his birthday than I am.
Behold the Garfield goddess. I am Sam and I proudly declare that cliché of being the number one fan. I challenge anyone who claims the very same thing.
See, my love for that cat is outrageously intense. No freaking exaggeration, just one hard fact about moi. I have been fanatically fixated on him since I was twelve, but I've always loved him since my neighbor, Ate Lucille, introduced him to me when I was eight. Adorable, Garfield is. Squishy big, fat, orange, funny, lazy, endearing, a darling. Very real. Sweet and sarcastic. Damn sharp and witty. Oh God, the adjectives can definitely go on forever. I mean, it's crazy not to love him.
But then again, some think that my Garfield affinity is too crazy for a nineteen year old. I have never changed; my twelve-year-old-girl passion still remains as that: a burning, gripping, genuine passion. I am more than a fan who stops at gawking and gushing over his favorite cartoon character - I go as far as kissing my Garfield (my Garfield extension phone, that is, when I found it too cute to be not to be kissed).
Out of this world, huh? That's just the beginning.
My first email address was, ta-dah: samantha_echavez@catsrule.garfield.com. When I realized it was too long for my senders' good, I switched to the username cutesam, later on to become stellar@e-garfield.com, which I had so fun of using what with the available Garfield stationeries and all. I had trouble with how the email ran as a system (that's as clear as I could get. Sorry no computer jargons for me) that I emailed the webmasters if they could please be as normal as Yahoo or Hotmail, whatever normal meant in my html vocabulary. This girl shuddered at the thought of giving up the Garfield address, but because the webmasters didn't comply with a fan's request, then off to a better, non-Garfield (sniff) email add.
Once, Garfield emailed me back! Okay, so I knew it wasn't really Garfield, but still, the reply was wonderfully devoured. And because at that time I read of Garfield restaurants in Malaysia and Hongkong, I emailed some marketing people behind Garfield's company and begged them to build one in Manila. The reply was promising, but uh, where is the restaurant? I also called RPN9 once and asked them to bring Garfield and Friends back on-air, to no avail.
I bought Garfield kiddie puzzles because I couldn't simply pass up the chance of owning one, the same way that I insisted on buying Garfield shoes from the children's shoe section.
My highschool notebooks were courtesy of Sterling's Garfield collection. Then one time when I was too broke to afford notebooks of the same kind, I bought all the Garfield stickers I could lay my hands on and collaged them altogether on the covers for the same cutey-catty effect. Garfield ballpens, check. Garfield bags including the one for toddlers, check. Garfield folders, fans, notepads, check. Garfield calculator, yep, I have that, and I actually cried when it stopped showing numbers on the screen but consoled myself anyway that it would look very good in my Garfield gallery.
The Garfield gallery goes in my room. There is this compartment in the wall that holds my Garfield action figures - a Garfield in a tennis outfit, a Santa Claus Garfield, a thumb-sucking Garfield cuddling his teddy bear, Pooky, Garfield in a skateboard, among others - and they all go side by side with the stuffed Garfields. Another shelf below the compartment holds other Garfield stuff like the mug, the broken alarm clock, the infamous calculator, the covers of mirrors, etcetera etcetera. Together with a couple of pictures of friends, the tangerine tabby dominates my corkboard up in the wall with lots of pictures of him, even those seemingly insignificant ones that people would normally throw away. Others posted are cross-stitched Garfield courtesy of my brother, and a Garfield drawing done by my bestfriend.
And that's something I'm very proud of. Most in my Garfield collection are not bought; my sweet family and friends gave them, from the action figures in my gallery down to the hairclips. Friends would donate their Garfield stuff, even if I weren't asking for them. Reuben's mechanical pencil container, Jason's Garfields from McDonald's old Happy Meals, Mel's bookmarks, Archie's picture book, and so many others to mention.
My first Garfield stuffed toy was a gift from a highschool friend, and up to now, even though it no longer has eyes and its fleshy foams are popping out of the fabric, I still have it with me on the bed, together with five other bigger Garfield stuffed toys and pillows that were all handed out to me. No money shelled out in my part there.
I love it too that I was lovingly smothered with letters in Garfield stationeries, cards and pictures. Paulo copied Garfield from my notebooks and he gave one drawing to me every other day back in high school. Joan did the same, coupled with dedications. A kabarkada's elder sister went through the hassle of drawing my cat in a Styrofoam, dressing it with felt paper and cutting it in its actual shape. There was Jefel who made a personal bookmark for me, with my name written in Garfield's thought bubble.
While it may seem that I have almost anything Garfield including the cheesiest Garfield leggings, my love for the world's most favorite cat is never confined to the temporal, is never based on all these Garfield collectibles. They simply act like denotations, the tangible manifestations of a fan's true love to a cartoon character that isn't just a cartoon character at all. I have concretized this love in so many other ways. One was by going to a certain mall as it was advertised that Garfield the Mascot would show up there, bringing a camera and company, actually and literally running so fast just so to catch up with the giant cat in the flesh and pose beside him jubilantly, a spectacle indeed to the sales ladies around us. Never mind that the camera was busted, thus shattering my hopes of having a picture beside a him. It was the closest thing of being with a really mobile Garfield.
Hey, it's 1:45am now. Happy birthday to my cat! Today I will wear my red Garfield shirt, which I bought the other week especially for this occasion. I will anticipate the birthday greetings from friends whom I had been bugging with trivia that Garfield's birthday is the same as Jose Rizal's and Anne Frank's, two of my most favorite historical figures. When Garfield will turn 35 and I, 29, I know things will be the same. Provided I haven't gone to Indiana by then, a dream because this is like, the Garfield hotbed of the world, I will still pine for that dream. I will still lug Garfield pens and notebooks from the bookstore, and unless something more powerful than the Internet will come up by that time, I will still browse through his comics online. Still the same desire to hug Garfield for real. Still the same giddy feeling. That cat has given me another great thing. He keeps me a child at heart.
Five years after, I have gathered enough Garfield items and books to build my own Garfield museum. Five years since I made the big switch to Blurty and Livejournal, I only changed my Garfield icon once (and my replacement was Basti Artadi and that only lasted for a day!). Five years after, I still lovelove this cat it's crazy! Really crazy.
Tomorrow, on Garfield's 30th birthday, I will wearmy red Garfield shirt once again :)