Why I’m Still As Obsessed with Whales as I Was as a Kid

When your life resonates with the plot of “Free Willy”

Photo by Iewek Gnos on Unsplash

I was obsessed with birds as a kid. But much like a black widow or a toddler with a carnival goldfish, I was never one to leave my pursuits alive for very long. That is, until I discovered whales.

Whales became one of the few obsessions that didn’t just stick throughout my childhood; the orca whale is still my favorite animal on the planet to this day. They’re the definition of, “I’m the nicest person you know, until you get on my bad side. Then I’m a huge bitch.” And who doesn’t love reality star energy in their aquatic creatures? Orcas are like the Countess Luann of the ocean, and that, they say, is indeed on period.

The ocean in the 90s was like catnip for kids, and for some reason, it made everyone want to be a marine biologist. The details of such a job didn’t matter; you’d get to hang out with sharks and dolphins and fish and whales all day! I blame Jacques Cousteau, but I genuinely have zero clue why deep-sea diving was so appealing to a bunch of fourth graders who are Lunchables for a great white shark.

Whales ticked two other big boxes for my young brain: They were full of mystery and majesty. And not to overanalyze what could just be me thinking something was cool, but there might have been some relation to them being in another world, quietly being some of the smartest and most fascinating creatures on the planet, and doing it flawlessly with a mouth full of krill.

If anything, I was envious of the lives whales got to lead. Just imagine swimming with your pod, clicking and popping with your echolocation, and then finishing off the day with some incredibly fresh sushi. What’s not to love?

But nothing turned me into a darker shade of green than thinking about the kid from Free Willy. To this day, all I can think about is how that shit wasn’t CGI, and if an orca whale breaches over my head as he did in the movie, I would never shower again.

Seeing as I was an expert at rotating through interests, anyone who wanted to get me gifts found it hard to keep up. Wait, so he’s not into rocks anymore? That was fast. So is he not gonna use that geode kit we got him then? Hang on, who gave him a flute? What do you mean he’s writing a novel? He’s fucking twelve.

I figured it was merciful to give the people in my life a safe baseline by always loving everything I could about whales and dolphins. I thought I had made myself clear, but apparently, some people only heard what they wanted to hear.

I’m sure this won’t surprise you if you’ve gotten this far, but in kindergarten, I was certain I was going to marry Dan Marino. This had nothing to do with me being gay (I was) or being a fan of him (I wasn’t). Nope, the only thing I cared about was that he was the quarterback for the best fucking football team name of all time: the Miami Dolphins.

I was not shy about this. You could even argue I was manifesting it. My immediate family didn’t care; they wrote it off as just another silly bit that I would eventually drop, like most things I said or did. But you have no clue just how serious I can get about things I don’t realize I don’t give a fuck about.

It was Christmas, I was seven, and we were finally opening presents at my grandma’s house. This was right after she, much to my mom’s chagrin, dragged us to a midnight mass, even though we weren’t remotely religious. I was exhausted by the time we got home, but the reminder that Santa had visited while we were gone gave me a second wind.

For all they did wrong, my family did Christmas right. My parents especially did not fuck around. Not only that, but they did something I respect: Many gifts were from Santa. But the big, important gifts? Those were always from Mom and Dad. I couldn’t care less if it was because they wanted credit—they deserve it—but as an adult, I think it’s so nice to remind your kids that you don’t just get presents because you’re “good.” You get them because you’re loved.

My grandma was usually no exception, giving me some of the best gifts of my young life, like my first Playstation 2. But there were some growing pains between Rita and me, and this was the Christmas I realized I had to set her straight by letting her know I was gay for Dan Marino.

“We” were Packers fans, in the sense that the green and gold cult vibes that I grew up with weren’t nefarious enough for me to fight against them, so I’d often get Packers socks or shirts or pajamas in an attempt to convince me to like a sport where people give each other brain damage. But I was young enough then to advocate for myself, despite that being the last thing anyone wanted me to do.

I opened a gift that was distinctly from my grandma and grandpa, revealing a Packers shirt. The adults all oohed and aahed around me, bulging their eyes out of their sockets as if to beg me to react better. I couldn’t. My heart belonged to one team and one team only, and that was the Miami Dolphins.

“Thank you, grandma. But…I don’t like the Packers. I like the Dolphins.”

You would have thought I’d slit her throat. The gall, the audacity, the absolute nerve of this sniveling brat to let people know that while he appreciated the gift, it just wasn’t something he wanted. This was the Midwest; you took that shit to your grave, and honestly? You took the fucking shirt with you.

I remember feeling the room shift into an icy chill, as if someone had just blown a hole through the window. Everyone kept up appearances like good little Lutherans, but I could tell I had done something wrong.

My mom eventually took me into the sunroom to discuss this horrible dismemberment of my grandmother in private.

“Sweetie, that wasn’t very nice what you did back there. That’s not how we accept gifts.”

Uh, duh? I thought. I wasn’t accepting it. Weren’t you there?

“But I don’t like the Packers, mommy.”

“I know. But it’s rude to tell someone you don’t like their gift.”

I’m gonna return us to our regularly scheduled programming here in a second, but I’d just like to deviate as adult me and say that this isn’t rude at all. It’s not always necessary; there’s merit in keeping your mouth shut sometimes. But how and why did I do it? Not rude.

But what an important lesson for a little Midwestern boy to learn: Pretend you’re okay with whatever you’re given, or people will be mad at you. Great, got it.

Honestly, it didn’t end up being like that with gifts. I have no poker face; if I like something, I’ll jump up and down, screaming about how this was the best day of my life. If I weren’t doing that, you missed the mark, no matter how much I tried to force a smile and say, “Thank you, I can’t wait to make my own rock-shaped bubblegum, Uncle Danny.”

Sometimes I question if my intense reactions were a way to subconsciously guide people to or away from behavior, like I was Jane Goodall and the adults in my life were all extremely successful gorillas. Well, it didn’t matter why I did it: It was working. Anything orca would always get me hyped, and seeing me get hyped is honestly pretty exciting. It’s one of my better qualities; I’m easily impassioned.

A few years later, my grandma, having learned her lesson from the field dressing I’d given her earlier, bought me a very special glass orca ornament. I loved it. It wasn’t anything I could play with. It didn’t do anything, but that didn’t matter; I was a preteen, and I didn’t do much either, but I was still perfectly worthy of love.

One day, my dad was standing in the doorway of the room I shared with my brother, yelling at me for something. This wasn’t remotely novel, but my reaction to it was. It was one of the first times I started to fight back, get snarky, and raise my voice in retaliation. I was getting so tired of feeling like a cornered animal, like a seal on an iceberg just waiting for the orcas to knock him into the sea to tear him to shreds.

But my dad was no stranger to brinkmanship. If you go low, he’d go lower. The “anything to win” mentality, likely curated by his love for the barbarians of the Green Bay Packers, meant that he had no problem getting down in the muck, losing his shit, and waiting for the dust to clear to see our tiny hands waving white flags.

His impulsiveness and anger were familiar to me, so I knew I was already playing a dangerous game by talking back. But sitting there and doing nothing wasn’t helping either, and this felt like my only other play. The argument reached a fever pitch before my dad picked up my orca ornament in a fury and slammed it to the ground like he was scoring a touchdown, shattering my gift into tiny pieces.

We both fell silent. He tried to remain powerful and indignant, but I saw the look in his eyes, and he saw the look in mine. It was the first time I remember thinking that my dad was a bad person. But for him, it was probably the millionth time.

I would eventually see that look in the mirror when I was in my twenties: a muted sadness, a helplessness against the emotional undertow pulling me into the depths of my mind. My adaptation of his behavior was both learned by example and inherited through ADHD and generational trauma.

Years later, my dad was in hospice, slowly dying from cirrhosis due to his heavy drinking, his last bastion against the specter we shared. I knew his pain now as an adult, but I refused and still refuse to respect his journey. He left the world in one of the saddest ways imaginable: broken, resigned, and completely unaware of how much love he was capable of giving and receiving.

My mom took care of my dad for nearly eight years before he passed. He died in October of 2022, and on August 4th of that year, my birthday, my mom sent me what I initially thought was kind of a silly gift: a stuffed orca whale. I was turning 34; what the fuck was I supposed to do with this? That thought went as quickly as it came. I went from rolling my eyes at an inane gesture to feeling seen and understood in a way I didn’t anticipate.

I ended up naming the orca Octavius, and I still sleep with him every night (though he’s currently out of office). He’s soaked up many of my tears, laughter, and frustrated screams. He was exactly what I needed to soften the blow of watching any chances of a healthy relationship with my father slam into the ground like a touchdown, shattering into tiny pieces. For the second time in my life.

Octavius the whale plushie also had a hand in healing my anger from the moment my dad broke my ornament. It left me with some renewed anger, mostly that my mom was often there, sweeping up after him and trying to make everything right, and that this felt like an extension of that. And just like every other time, I doubt he even knew it was happening. Cleaning up after his mess was often her job, and I strangely resented both of them for it.

Whales are majestic creatures whose intelligence rivals that of humans. But just like us, they’re still animals. Fortunately for them, they aren’t tied down by the wicked brambles of society, forced to deny their instincts and lie to their whale grandmas about how much they like a T-shirt.

I felt grateful that even now, in my thirties, people know that in moments like this—moments where language fails them—you can’t go wrong with getting me a whale.

CJ Darnieder is a comedic essayist and creative writer from Milwaukee, WI. He is currently working on a collection of personal essays titled “Cigarettes for Lunch” and his debut fantasy novel.