Winnie and Losing: My Hatred For and Failure to Understand Winnie the Pooh

This is actually the third attempt at posting this article because the good folk at Blogspot are fans of Winnie the Pooh, and I have a feeling they are out to get me! Anyway, here it goes...

I was driving around my hometown this week, when I saw this on the side of the movie theatre: "Oh no." I said.

I hate Winnie the Pooh, I never liked Winnie the Pooh, I could never understand Winnie the Pooh, I found the Winnie the Pooh books to be verbose, I believe the Winnie the Pooh television shows/hour-long television features/straight-to-DVD movies/feature-length films to be repetitive, and I find sorting individual grains of sand by height for the next seven hundred years to be more exciting and productive to the furtherance of humanity than one minute of watching that idiot bear digging for honey.

The lazy bear, the pathetic pig, the arrogant owl, the whining rabbit, the annoying tiger, the invisible kangaroos, the attention-seeking donkey, the big-headed Christopher Robin with no friends, and now...a balloon?! REALLY?

In my university days, I would discuss the merits and values of Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood, and I would routinely run into fellow students and teachers who more than frequently shared their displeasure for Mister Rogers. I could never understand why, but I accepted it. Their points were thoughtful, concise, and some felt weirded out by the "Neighbourhood" experience. It was in the student centre cafetorium when the following occurred: My friends were decrying my love of the "Neighbourhood", and questioned how I could watch such a program. Towards the end of the debate, I uttered "I know lots of people, some of which were my best friends, and how they don't like the "Neighbourhood" as well". Then, to offer a similar example of something I disliked with a passion fruit, I said "I don't like Winnie the Pooh."

The chatter of the cacophony of conversation within the cafetorium ceased, parents sitting next to their kids covered the ears of the young 'uns, books fell from the hands of studying students to the floor, ceramic plates dropped and smashed into pieces, teachers fainted, the chaplain prayed for my lost soul, and one of the larger students banished me from the Student Centre for three days, or at least until I learned the error of my ways and beg forgiveness. That was seven years ago, and while one of those reactions was false, I did draw the ire of many a student at the University of Toronto as "The Fallen One" for "speaking blasphemy and questioning the divine origin of all things of Saint Winnie the Pooh".

I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm embedding the trailer onto my blog so I can see if my suspicions are true, and the film is a reworked copy of something they drew up years ago.



I was right. It is the same thing. I'm not going to Winnie this battle, am I?