How About That Thing?

The Adventures of Pete And Pete debuted on Nickelodeon in 1992. However, it wouldn’t be until a good three years or so into its run that I could say I appreciated it. And even then, I only truly liked a handful of episodes at best. And yet, upon retrospect, I can’t remember why.

Weird TV was usually my jam as a kid, and I think Nickelodeon understood that itch that needed scratching better than most children’s networks or blocks at the time. I don’t think anybody else would’ve given shows like Ren and Stimpy, or Salute Your Shorts, or even Roundhouse the time of day, but Nickelodeon did.

But then The Adventures of Pete and Pete showed up, and… I guess for lack of a better term, the weird meter just broke. I didn’t think a show could be TOO weird… But Pete and Pete found a way.

How the hell do the parents distinguish between the Petes? Like, they’re not twins, obviously, but when you want to talk to Big Pete, how do you get his attention without getting Little Pete’s attention? Do they have a system we never got to see on camera? Or is it like that South Park episode with the planet Marklar, where everybody just knows you’re talking to that specific guy when you call out “HEY, MARKLAR!”.

And what the fuck was up with Arty? That dude was, undisputedly, the most confusing thing about that show. A friend of mine at the time insisted he was Little Pete’s imaginary friend, but there are episodes where he interacts with the adults as if he’s a flesh and blood human being. Is he mentally retarded? Did he escape from a psychiatric hospital? THE HELL AM I LOOKING AT?

But as time went on, I found I did eventually develop an appreciation for Pete and Pete. I still wouldn’t say it was my favorite show on Nickelodeon, but if you told me it was YOUR favorite, I wouldn’t challenge you on it.

One thing I WILL say, though, is that Pete and Pete was, strangely enough, my gateway into the fascinating art of origami. Right about now, I can’t help but imagine you, dear reader, giving me a strange look on the other side of the monitor, wondering if I’m high. I assure you, friend, I am absolutely, undisputedly, dead serious.

It all started with the two-parter, “Farewell My Little Viking.” AKA, the episode where they wrote Arty out of the show. I’m not going to give you a full-blown recap of the episode this go-around, but I WILL tell you that it was the episode where we got this little guy.

This is Papercut. Legend has it he was born in the back of a copy shop. Yeah, remember when those were a thing? Anyway, he didn’t really have any REAL friends, so he did what most kids in that situation would do: he played with paper. As a result, he suffered so many papercuts that, according to Big Pete, it did something to his brain. The next thing anybody knew, he was Papercut: lord of the seventh grade, and world champion rock paper scissors player. Largely because nobody was brave enough to throw scissors whenever he threw paper. And he always threw paper.

Admittedly, Papercut was a bit of a one-dimensional bully. Outside of his origami gimmick, and his love affair with rock paper scissors, there really wasn’t much else going on with him. Hell, there have been bullies in Stephen King novels that had more detail put into them than Papercut. And yet, he still ended up being one of, if not my favorite antagonist in Pete and Pete.

It was through Papercut where I learned what origami was, and ever since then, I’ve had a sort of on-again-off-again interest in the art.

The first time I tried to take origami seriously, I was in fifth grade. I won’t bore you with the gruesome details, but when I was ten, my parents and I moved to Kansas City over the summer. I had to say goodbye to friends I’d known and loved since kindergarten, and wound up in a fifth grade class of kids who had to be given a week’s worth of lectures on blindness and “how the new kid works.” On top of all that, my mom didn’t get off work till about five O’clock, so I had to spend additional time in the afterschool care program. I didn’t have any friends at the time, so I gravitated towards the thing that interested me the most at the time. And that thing, interestingly enough, was origami.

Granted, they didn’t have proper origami paper to work with, so I had to improvise, and use construction paper. To make matters worse, said construction paper was the wrong dimensions. I tried to correct by cutting off the extra bits… But as memory serves, scissors that weren’t dull as hell, or designed to cut weird zigzag patterns were hard to come by in that room. As a result, I didn’t ever get to make any swans or fish or whatever. At most, I could make an origami cat, and a paper football.

I did eventually find a friend or two to hang out with in those days, but that first day was rough. And finding myself attempting origami, even if it was with the wrong paper, kind of reminded me of the origin story of Papercut. I didn’t cut myself over and over again, but I was playing with paper instead of trying to make friends. Looking back, the irony of the situation is not lost on me.

Throughout my life, I got a LITTLE better at origami. I still can’t make cranes to save my life, but I can make dogs, cats, airplanes… Okay, airplanes probably don’t count as origami, but I did learn how to make them.

Occasionally, I’ll look up an origami artist on YouTube, and I always find myself amazed with the things they come up with. Whether it be something as simple as a bird, or something as intricate as a bouquet of flowers, it never ceases to amaze me how talented these guys are.

I never did get any better at the craft, but every now and then, it’s something I’ll pick back up, and give a try. With the advent of YouTube, I have much better tutorials than some of the text-only crap I used to find through Google. Seriously, would a couple photos kill you? And to think, all it took was one of the most one-dimensional characters from a show that I didn’t even really like all that much to get the ball rolling. That’s just how my mind works, I guess.