This post is going to veer from the original gag.  You can guess the rest of the gag yourself.   Spinach bad.   Mob blames Popeye.   Hilarious.   (go here if you don’t know who Popeye is). 

What interests me is that this cheap Popeye gag has served a more important service:  it has opened up a long-repressed memory.

Here’s the story:

As I was preparing for this brilliant humor piece, I was searching online for a picture of Popeye that I was hoping to politely “borrow.”  Then, I stumbled onto this site that had a .wav file of the famous Popeye theme song.  

I listened to it over and over.  “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man…”  It struck a nerve.  This theme became my madeleine.  (This is a reference to Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, in English known as Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time.  In the novel, “the narrator’s memories of childhood are awakened by the aroma and taste of a madeleine dipped in tea.”  This is an amazing literary masterpiece.  One day I hope to actually read it rather than just look it up in Wikipedia).

As i listened to the final “boop boop” in the theme song, I remembered that I used to watch reruns of Popeye on a local New York TV channel.  I must have been very young at the time and I was fascinated by the triangle of Popeye, Olive Oyl and the villainous Bluto.

The plot lines in the animated cartoons tended to be simple.

A villain, usually Bluto (later renamed Brutus for a time), makes a move on Popeye’s “sweetie”, Olive Oyl. The bad guy then clobbers Popeye until Popeye eats spinach, which gives him superhuman strength.  

I especially liked it when Olive Oyl melted in Popeye’s arms at the end, after he defeated Bluto.

As an only child, I was competitive with my father for my mother’s attention.  I think Freud (or Karen Horney!) would have loved to analyze my childhood obsession with Popeye, an obsession which I have pretty much repressed for years until today. 

But now I remember it.

I would ask my mother to cook some frozen spinach (all of her vegetables were frozen at the time — tasteless, watery mush).  After they were cooked, I would have her  put the cooked spinach into a used can of Spaghetti-Os so I could make believe that I had a can of spinach like Popeye.  I have no idea why we just didn’t use a can of spinach!   Once I had my can of spinach as my acting prop, I became Popeye — in the same way Sir Laurence Olivier became Hamlet.  My mother was Olive Oyl.  She would go into her bedroom or the kitchen and cry for help.  I would eat some spinach out of the can with a fork, flex my bicep, and rush in to save her from whatever danger she was in.

Jeez, no wonder I repressed this.  How embarrassing!

I called up my mother tonight.

Neil:  Guess what I’m going to write about in my blog tomorrow?  “Popeye Attacked by Anti-Spinach Mob!”

Mom:  That’s funny.  But I always knew this bagged spinach wasn’t good.  

Neil:  And how did you know that?

Mom:  The bag always said that it was washed three times — and it came from California.

Neil:  Yeah, so?

Mom:  So?   You don’t even DRINK the water in California.

Neil:  Great.  I know.  I know.  The water in New York is the best.

Mom:  You can actually drink it!

Neil:  OK.  But that’s not why I called you.  I wanted to ask you something.  Do you remember Popeye?

Mom:  Of course I remember Popeye. 

Neil:  Do you remember watching Popeye?

Mom:  I never watched Popeye.  I never liked Popeye.  I thought he looked like a pervert.

Neil:  A pervert?

Mom:  He had this one eye.  And creepy voice.  And weird body.

Neil:  No, do you remember us?   I would be Popeye and you would be Olive Oyl and I would rescue you?

Mom:  We did that?

Neil:  Yes!  Don’t you remember you would cook frozen spinach and put it in a Spaghetti-Os can?

Mom:  Wouldn’t it make more sense to just buy a can of spinach?

Neil:  I was going to ask you that!

Mom:  I don’t remember this.

Neil:  You don’t remember playing this at all?

Mom:  Maybe you played it with your friend Robert.

Neil:  I played it with YOU.

Mom:  I remember playing Scrabble.

Neil:  Oh my god!  You’ve repressed the memory, too!  Wait, hold on.

I quickly went to that website with the wav. file of the Popeye theme.  I put the phone against the speaker so she could hear the familiar tune.  “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man…”

Neil:  Listen to this!  Does this jog your memory now?  Does this remind you of anything?

Mom:  It reminds me that Popeye seemed like a pervert.

Neil:  Mom, I was Popeye!  We played Popeye together!

Mom:  Well, I think this explains a lot about what you write on your blodge.

A Year Ago on Citizen of the Month:  Modern Talmudic Question