Download “Twenty Years On.mp3”

(Want the sheet music?)

Hey, Honey . . .

I was going through some old boxes,

And look who I found!

I thought maybe you’d want to give him to Brian . . .


Look at him, Hobbes.

Lying there sleeping.

Look at him there --

Quiet and tiny and new.


Hard not to see

Boundless potential,

Looking at him,

Thinking of all that he’ll do.


Will he like music?

Will he build snowmen?

Will he like dinosaurs?

Will he like you?


Will he go sledding?

Will he fear monsters?

Will he play “Brianball”

Like we used to do?


Will he ride wagons down hills

And through forests?

Will he fight grisly duels with his food?

Will he take plain cardboard boxes

And use them to reforge his world?


Or will he be diff’rent?

I guess we’ll see

How he’ll be him.

Him, and not me . . .


We’ll watch, and help him grow.

We’ll teach him what we know.

And then we’ll let him ... go . . .


A new life.

A fresh clean start.

I love you, Son.

Go explore . . .




The last time we officially saw these characters was on December 31st, 1995.  (And it’s worth looking up that final Sunday strip online.  I tried to do musically what Bill did visually -- and my final stanza is about as direct a tribute as I can possibly imagine.)


I don’t know just how this song may or may not resonate with listeners unfamiliar with the referenced characters.  But for fans like me, this song should (I hope!) trigger wave after wave of happy memories, and maybe even inspire people to track down an anthology and to re-immerse themselves into the world(s?) of this particular six-year-old and his best friend.


As to the song itself?  On one hand, I like it a lot.  It’s a wonderful song and it’s just what I wanted it to be.  On the other hand, though, I feel a bit sad that -- to my mind -- I’ve already written “this song” before.  This song seems (to me) like one more in a list of certain songs I’ve written that are all very similar to each other.  As excited as I am for the start of SpinTunes Seven, I can’t help but feel a bit let down that the song I wanted to write to meet this challenge didn’t take me to a place where I got to push my boundaries at all.



Oh well.  Maybe next time . . .




(Spoken dialogue performed by Brandi Burns.)