Here's the text of a speech Bill Watterson gave at Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio, to the 1990 graduating class) SOME THOUGHTS ON THE REAL WORLD BY ONE WHO GLIMPSED IT AND FLED Bill Watterson Kenyon College Commencement May 20, 1990 I have a recurring dream about Kenyon. In it, I’m walking to the post office on the way to my first class at the start of the school year. Suddenly it occurs to me that I don’t have my schedule memorized, and I’m not sure which classes I’m taking, or where exactly I’m supposed to be going. As I walk up the steps to the postoffice, I realize I don’t have my box key, and in fact, I can’t remember what my box number is. I’m certain that everyone I know has written me a letter, but I can’t get them. I get more flustered and annoyed by the minute. I head back to Middle Path, racking my brains and asking myself, “How many more years until I graduate? …Wait, didn’t I graduate already?? How old AM I?” Then I wake up. Experience is food for the brain...
Sometimes I just feel that I will wake up one day and I will find everything in my world completely washed up brand new.That the present I am in is a form of sleep,a kind of hypnotic daze,a dream which has become too real,too palpable and too long because nothing extraordinary happened in it which could have awakened me. It seems so bizarre when I imagine about that reality in which I may not be as young as I am right now but that I am some old man,a middle aged guy with a pot belly who has fallen asleep under a tree reading Alice in Wonderland. Then comes a sense of relief,a sense of release from the fear of the events going to happen in this present dream as sooner or later this slumber will break and snap-snap all things will be new So there is no need to worry about my future in this dream. But there is a panic bone in my body near my heart which starts hurting my it reminding me of the future which I will have to face once I am back in the reality of which I do not have an...