Who is your favorite cartoon character?

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I don’t remember having a favorite cartoon character. Apparently, my wife had enough favorite for both of us.

I watched cartoons growing up, plenty of them. Saturday mornings provided the usual parade of animated foolishness, and I enjoyed it well enough, but I was always more of a live-action guy. Give me actual people running around getting into trouble, and I was probably going to choose that over something animated.

Still, somehow, Bugs Bunny survived.

Not necessarily because he was my favorite, but because he was hers.

My wife was an extreme Bugs Bunny fan. And when I say extreme, I mean the kind of fan whose affection eventually becomes everybody else’s shopping assignment. The children bought her Bugs Bunny stuff. I bought her Bugs Bunny stuff. She bought herself Bugs Bunny stuff. That rabbit was everywhere.

After enough years, you stop questioning it.

You see Bugs Bunny and think of her.

Funny thing about memory: it doesn’t always preserve what you loved most. Sometimes it hangs onto what the people you loved loved. Their music gets mixed into your soundtrack. Their sayings sneak into your vocabulary. Their favorite foods become things you recognize on sight. And apparently, their smart-ass cartoon rabbits take up permanent residence somewhere in your head.

So, if you ask me who my favorite cartoon character is, I still don’t know that I have one.

But ask me which one survived the decades?

Bugs Bunny.

The bastard wasn’t even my favorite, and somehow he still won.

Eh… what’s up, Doc?