The Great Waldo Column

Cheerio. Allow me to renew our acquaintanceship. Name's Martin Handford. Modesty permits me to realize that my name might not make the old memory bell go “Ring-a-ding-ding,” but if you're a lad or pixie who came of age in the 1990s, I'd wager pounds to chips you're quite familiar with my most notable creation—my claim to fame, as the Yank expression goes. I'm the illustrator who drew pictures of the slender chap dressed in red-and-white-striped garb, the bespectacled fellow with a knack for getting lost in immense crowds. You know him stateside as Waldo.

What a thrill it was to earn a fortune simply by hiding a candy-cane-colored beanpole somewhere in the midst of a throng of vikings, peasants, or beach-goers. From the depths of my grateful bosom, I thank you, fine Americans, for embracing the search for an elusive, four-peepered chap with a Cat in the Hat-colored cap.

It should be known that my career as an illustrator of children's books was not without its fair share of hiccups. My first several efforts in that area were, to put it mildly, colossal failures. Verbose works such as The Self-Esteem Fairy Hugs Insecure Keith and 'Lil Paul Filches the Filthy Irishman's Pot of Gold featured a minimum of illustrations and went largely unread; their marginal success barely permitted yours truly to eek out a living. At age 34 I scarcely had the means to afford a bottle of monocle polish on a fortnightly basis. It was a rather dreadful era.

Like a bare-knuckle boxer struck backward into a woozy stupor by his opponent's mighty hay-maker, I was on the ropes. With my venture as an author of children's books in question, I resorted to my secondary passion, decorating erotic cakes, for a primary source of income. I've always had a flair for creating gaudy visuals, and this was evidenced by my penchant for crafting dark chocolate buttocks and strawberry torte phalli. I was able to support myself in this bawdy profession, but I was far from content sculpting labia folds and clitorises with tubes of frosting. My inner artist—a rather conceited bloke, I confess—yearned for literary acclaim.

I was struck by an epiphany when a cheeky and decadent single father with twin boys ordered a knockers-shaped cake for the lads' 12th birthday party. Betwixt and beneath the bosom the caption was to read, “Talk about an Extraordinary Pair!” My mind was always elsewhere during those days, toiling with the futile daydreams that had become my next idea for a book, and as I labored on the raspberry jublees at hand, precision eluded me; I misspelled “Extraordinary” as “Extrordinary.”

It was not until I delivered the cake that I detected the mistake. I met the jubilant glee of the children with stone-faced embarrassment. The matter was exacerbated when the father insisted I stay to enjoy a piece. My attempts to backpedal were waved away as he ushered me toward a park bench cluttered with rowdy and expectant youngsters. I offered meek pleasantries and dawdled about as the defective cake was presented. I gulped morosely, dreading the unveiling of my careless failure.

But my misgivings proved entirely misguided. Upon sight of the scrumptious knockers, the boys hooted with incessant mirth and offered me highly raised open palms as congratulatory gestures. Photographs were snapped, wolfish grins abounded, and with initial resignation, the boys dug in and devoured the concupiscent cake. The father tipped me generously, swatted me heartily betwixt the shoulder blades, and wished me a good day.

Traipsing back to my lorry, at last it occurred to me. Not a soul noticed my gaffe because children don't care a lick for reading, particularly when the words are in competition with striking visuals. The Self-Esteem Fairy Hugs Insecure Keith was a commercial debacle primarily because the ratio of words to illustrations was 500 to 1. The trick to success in the children's book racket was to do everything in my power to invert that ratio.

The groundworks were set in place for my next book: Abounding visuals, minimal words. My brainchild was still in its fetal stages, however, since I still lacked a main character and a setting with which he or she would intermingle.

Fortuity found me for a second time later that week when I received a pressing phone call from my hysterical mum. In a fit of consternation, she reported that my half-wit brother Wally (one can guess accurately the nickname we lent him) had gone missing again. Wally is a mute and placid mental invalid, deficient in the capacity to care for himself. As a consequence, Wally has resided with me mum and pop his entire life. Approaching the age of 40 at the time of this incident, Wally had gnawed through his leash and wandered away whilst me mum was busily watering the petunias in her garden. Mum charged me with the responsibility of tracking down Wally and bringing him home safely—a duty that had daunted and wearied me since childhood but, much like the permanent bonds of brotherhood itself, could not be denied.

Canvasses of the pet store and the candy shop proved futile, and with a despairing sigh, it occurred to me that Wally must have ambled with his characteristic curiosity out to the Pikey (meaning gypsy or vagabond, to use terms you Yanks are more accustomed to) grounds on the threshold of town. Pikeys are a seedy and treacherous lot, and it has long been my contention that Pikeys possessed a certain magnetism for Wally's darker impulses, which were repressed by the comfort and sterilization my parents imposed on him. My parents attributed the attraction to the shiny glints of light the sun reflected on the Pikeys' aluminum trailers.

Whatever the case may be, in the midst of a chaotic sprawl of meager and eccentric humanity, among multitudes of ramshackle trailers, makeshift dingy tents, packs of foul-tempered and mangy hounds, destitute drunkards, panhandling lads, pregnant ladies of the night, heroine-addled rag-and-bone junkies, and other assorted vermin, I spotted Wally extending his torso out from behind a derelict living quarters, pawing the gleam reflected on the aluminum siding of the dwelling. (Regardless of this admission, I nonetheless believe my contention about Wally's darker impulses is valid.) I surveyed the sordid scene from a distance because it is unwise for bookish and slender types such as myself to gallivant about a lot of Pikeys without a clear and concise purpose. Put more ignobly, I was, and remain, terrified of Pikeys. Terror aside, let it be noted here that first official search for “Waldo” was accomplished in four minutes, 33 seconds.

I rescued Wally without incident, returned him home to my mother and father, and briskly drove back to my flat to begin work on my first illustration of Waldo getting lost in a sprawling congregation of bodies. Thus ignited a scalding torrent of creative boom, an explosion of muse-groping productivity. My agent and the publishers had grown leery of me because of my prior failures, but I wrangled a proposal-meeting sold by the simple promise of delivering a book without words that would sell millions.

My agent and the publishers alike became smitten with the idea of Where's Waldo?, and in no time, borderline illiterate children across the globe shared the same dumbstruck fervor for my creation. Indeed, Where's Waldo? was the speeding vessel that put me in the conductor seat of the marmalade choo-choo with chip wheels. Where's Waldo? became a splendorous success in 1987, a phenomenon as integral to the pop culture landscape as Alf and British Knights alike, and I was unparalleled in my lofty perch as a children's book author who delivered pictures rather than words.

By the time The Great Waldo Search was released in 1989, I had earned wealth prodigious enough to at last actualize my lifelong dream. (More on that in the ensuing paragraphs.) Compounding my riches, I successfully sued over a hundred of those wee fuckers who circled Waldo with a marker on every spread of one of my books, charging the disreputable vermin with Defacement of Art. Let my cordial air in this open letter not fool you, fearful reader: Circling the exact location of Waldo in permanent marker or ink is a crime more egregious than both tearing the sacred tag from a mattress and molesting a baby seal. It is with righteous authority that I vow to pursue hefty financial redress from all the world's wicked Waldo-circlers.

Moving on to more pleasureful matters, allow me to expound on the aforementioned lifelong dream I embarked on in the wake of my three best-sellers. Ever since the hormonal impetus of my rather restless and desperate adolescence, I've harbored an insatiable penchant for 1.) traveling abroad and 2.) infiltrating the loose knickers of ravishing floozies. For those profound reasons, I ventured on an adventurous and bawdy crusade upon my early retirement from the grinds of hacking out a living. I set out on my yacht that boasted its own football field (or “soccer,” as you Yanks so insipidly know it by) as well as four competing British Petrol (“eum” be damned) stations, which came in handy as a source of fuel for the dune buggies all guests and myself as transportation around the sprawling landscape of my daily playground. Christened the S.S. Waldomecile Perfection, a handful of rabble-rousing drinking mates from my Jane Austin book club and their key party clan of librarian-sexy harlots accompanied me on a worldwide journey of the oceans surrounding the globe, voyaging to each and every country. We started with Albania, disembarking off the eastern coast of the Ionian Sea, set off for the nation's capitol of Tirana, found the cheeky side of town, and then I personally made it a point to roger the daylights out of my favorite exotic prosty. Her name was Melodiat, and heavens to Betsy, the cooing melodies of her feline purr still resonate in the loins of yours truly, Martin Handford. Suffice it to say, any number of lewd quips from the film Austin Powers that I am too dignified to contrive involving the words “rotten” and “shagging” surely apply here.

Next we set out for the Bahamas. I'm not even certain whether the Bahamas qualifies as its own country; regardless, I really wanted to go because I heard in a pub that the sun-baked naked, nubile flesh of their women is without reproach—superlative, one might even say. Oh, the rogering sessions were exquisite.

Canada was next on my list, and it at this point that I end my list of countries I've shagged prostitutes in with an ETC. Decency permits me to realize that my bawdy chronicles may be shocking and perhaps disturbing to readers with fond memories of my harmless and imaginative visual romps. Granted, I was never as cherished quite like the great Dr. Seuss (and with good reason), but hell, it was generally agreed that I was a better alternative to glancing through rubbish like Ziggy and Marmaduke and Kathy and The Family Circus and oh God, the dreadful list is interminable. Ziggy and Marmaduke can jolly well fuck-off in the face of my brother Waldo.

But perhaps the melancholy question lingers as such: Must everything we embrace as children with sincere and unblemished honour be corrupted one day by the transgressions of sinful adults? Indeed, it is with a heavy heart that I ponder that question while getting my knob bobbed by a French whore as soon as I'm done writing this message...or is it more apt to write confession?

Decency permits me to pose such a query. But honesty permits me to pledge that I really don't give a shit one way or the other. Happiness is a senseless, sordid business, and having found it somehow, I can tell you that happiness just vanishes the more you question it, and so it's best not to trifle it by means of scrutiny, even when the scrutiny is perfectly reasonable.


Epilogue.

It is with extraordinary pride and bafflement that I suspect my brother Waldo has found true love. On our 7th stop in Great Britain, I begged my parents—two noble flames that refuse to be smoldered, as the flames atop the candles we hold as we cross aching floorboards in the dark hallway to the safety of bed. They've agreed to allow Waldo passage onto the S.S. Traveling Waldomecile Perfection, from Mother England to Haiti and back for tea time in four days.

Our lavish debauchery was kept to minimum on those voyages. Waldo entertained the smitten ensemble, shaking hands and hugging with timid jubilation, performing cart-wheels to gushing applause, doing Charlie Chaplain imitations, waddling back and forth with his index finer draped beneath his nose to mime the mustache.

Waldo's favorite leisure activity, and indeed his most formidable skill, is draughts. (Stateside, you know it as checkers.) Waldo cannot drive a vehicle, nor prepare his own meals or recite the alphabet, but to my knowledge, he has not lost a game of “checkers” since the age of 5, when my father bested him by two pieces when he was 45. Since then my father's championship drought in household draughts has gone the way of the Chicago Cubs in your national past-time.

We picked up a rather tame and upstanding masseuse in London, and she has taken quite a shining to Waldo. His boundless unrest and unquenchable curiosity are vanquished in her presence. As I write this, Waldo is once again demonstrating his prowess on the checkerboard. He prevails and then rises to offer her a consolatory hug as she pretends to cry amidst pangs of laughter. The two of them are secluded at the far extremity of my yacht. There is not another soul within 100 meters. Waldo has never been easier to spot. It's as if he's given up on getting lost. Perhaps all these years Waldo wasn't really wandering aimlessly into a throng of hectic humanity; he was searching for someone with a purpose too profound to express with words.