What is Pee-wee Herman?

“If Pee-wee Herman didn’t exist, man would invent Pee-wee Herman.” Voltaire said that about God, but in my head it makes way more sense for Pee-wee. There’s something about Pee-wee Herman that is eternal. Unknowable. A world of contradictions wound tightly into a 98 pound package stuffed into a slim grey suit. Benevolent, malevolent, ambivalent all at once. Pee-wee Herman is far more mysterious than God to me. God is an old man with a long white beard, and I’ve known this for a while.

Yes, obviously this is because I was a weird little dude born in 1984. I don’t recall my first exposure to Pee-wee, but it was probably his TV show, or it could have been one of his movies. It definitely wasn’t his not-for-kids live stage show, but I also rented that as a kid because I had to consume all the Pee-wee stuff there was.

So sure, if you grew up in the late eighties and early nineties, Pee-wee was more like a presence than a man, or even a character. I’m sure my aged parents thought he was just a weird goofball that sold dolls and moved on. Adults back then didn’t over-analyze this stuff, they worked at office buildings.

In reality, Pee-wee Herman is the invention of writer and actor Paul Reubens, who died on Sunday night after having cancer for 6 years.

“Where do you get your ideas?” The ultimate bad interview question. But something can only be the worst if it’s tempting to ask. Nobody complains about the bad questions that no one thinks of. People are curious and creativity is difficult to pin down, I understand the impulse. I never met Paul Reubens, and if I did, I’d be humiliated to ask him that, but I do want to know: where did you get Pee-wee Herman?

He’s a child. He’s a children’s show host. He’s a weird pervert. He’s asexual. He’s sweet and innocent, but he’s inconsiderate. He’s definitely annoying, but countless people loved watching him.

Pee-wee is hardly even a character, he’s a fully formed human boy that lived in our world. Not only that, he was a celebrity. Paul Reubens wasn’t credited in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Pee-wee was. It was his adventure! He went on talk shows, he performed live, he hosted his own show. Pee-wee is in that great photo with Rodney Dangerfield and David Lee Roth, not Paul.

So while Paul Reubens, an accomplished actor and writer, who by all accounts I’ve seen from friends and acquaintances, was one of the sweetest people, a good friend, and a kind soul, has sadly passed away, he leaves us with one of the biggest gifts imaginable that he spent his life creating. He leaves us with something that never existed before him, but would impact everything that came after. A timeless character that shaped comedy and culture, who lives on for weird kids to watch for generations to come.

The immortal Pee-wee Herman.

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