Disclaimer: I do not own Hey Arnold!.
The punches aren't love-- and he knows it. But what can he do?
Breathing is an art form.
There's a slight hesitance in the breathing of the nervous. Fearful. Shy. Like a turtle in a shell so magnificent, yet always unseen by the inhabitant who hides within it.
See your beauty, he thinks, someday.
There's the breathing of anger, too; and that is the one he is most fascinated by. It reminds him of his father, the old lump who jugs a glass of tea because he's afraid of the monsters in bottles. There's a hidden desire there-- a need to suppress urges. (Love?) Brainy doesn't get hugs; he gets tea. And the tea is always cold.
A good memory: his father told him to never stop breathing before he (suppressed suppressed suppressed) took up yoga, china collecting, attic-cleaning.
You're father, Brainy's grandfather would say, has fogged-up glasses.
Uh-huhn.
Do you know why?
Uh-uhn.
He won't let out the anger.
A-nn-grr! It rolls off the tongue and makes sense. Even he gets angry, this John nicknamed "Brainy". Even he wants to scream and shout for a lost mother, a more lost father, and a farther, farther dream of piloting with angels and family.
But he is not angry (in breathing).
Because he (in breathing) drinks lots of tea.
He drank and drank and drank.
-- Until Old Betsy.
She's a beauty, that one: curved and bare in all the right places. She can't help but strike him. (Huh huh huh). She's got an extra knuckle for the tender parts on his face. It's just how it is; they came together by accident.
He just saw Helga and found himself breathing, breathing like his grandfather always wanted him to. (Express the anger, anger, anger.) Old Betsy, the ol' fist, crushed his glasses with hot-tempered aggravation.
Oh, he thought. That's how I can touch her.
Words don't touch like action (like breathing). It's the action (the breathing) that gets someone to notice him, someone to take a chance on him. She says once in awhile for him to go away-- "Stop breathing on me!"-- but he doesn't take it literally.
He can't.
Just tell me to stop breathing (Mom is dead).
That'll make me breathe harder (Like Dad, I am alive).
The punches aren't love-- But what can he do?
He needs incentives for this art form.