Cartoon Short

I had a new experience today of the evocative power of animation. The thing about cartoons is that they're usually more about what's being told than how it's being told. But today I saw this little intermission short that told a simple story, that became very touching and nice through the expressiveness of the drawing.

The story was told from the point of view of a shop keeper who one day met an elderly couple in her store. She sold them some wallpaper, and as they left, she felt bad for them that they had to paper their walls themselves. Early the next morning, she found the elderly man waiting outside the store. He was there to buy more wallpaper because, as he said, the paper got stuck. When the shop keeper asked what he meant, he told her the story.

That morning, his wife had woken up extra early. She wanted to ease her husband's work by applying the wallpaper paste beforehand, and she spent the whole morning doing this. Unfortunately, the paste dried more quickly than she thought, and the wallpaper got stuck together in the stacks in which she left them. When they tried to pull them apart, the paper ripped. The wife felt very embarassed; the husband comforted her and said he'd buy some more wallpaper. The shop keeper gave him the wallpaper, and reflected how nice it was that this old couple was so caring toward one another

The little touches captured the warmth of moment: the gingerly way the elderly couple carried themselves; the wife's crestfallen face when she realized what she had done; the elegance of gesture as the husband held his wife's hand to comfort her...

I thought, Ha, I must be losing it. Despair must have made me wacky if I'm watching all ten minutes of this cartoon couple and feeling jealous of what they have.