John Little - Jacob Simmons
Art Credit: Chad Carter
"This infant was call'd John Little,"
quoth he.
"Which name shall be chang'd anon,
the words we'll transpose, so where-
ever he goes,
his name shall be called Little John."
–The Ballad of Robin Hood and Little John
For clarification, I asked my dad if I was born into a house that already had a VCR. He laughed and said, “You were born into a house that borrowed VCRs.”
Disney movies back in the day came in oversized white plastic boxes with cover art and a synopsis on the sleeve like a hard-cover book. My parents bought our first VCR, and Disney’s Robin Hood, when I was in kindergarten. Childhood can smell like magnetic oxide and plastic. Adolescence can be a rectangle. It can be black and white. I watched Robin Hood, like many children watch what they love, incessantly.
Little John is my guy. While Robin is cupcakin’ in Sherwood Forest with Maid Marian, John’s tearing it up with the hootenannying poor. He dances with friends and loved ones: mice, rabbits, a turtle, a chicken. He sings, The Phony King of England and carries on into an animated fadeout. We’re led to believe the party lasts all night.
Little John bamboozled the powerful corrupt. He hoodwinked the maniacal. He exposed toxic officers of the law for their foolishness, their littleness. When Robin had a chain around his neck, Little John broke him free. I root for Little John. His victory is one for counter-culture. He’s a disruptor, an agitator, a happy outsider. Little John is a charmer and an ally, and he wants to live in a kinder, more peaceful forest.
How easy it was to spot what’s good when you’re a child. The characters who smile with their whole face. The ones who love others. The ones who play in nature. The joyful ones. The helpful ones. The ones who don’t traffic in fear. I wonder when the ability to see what’s good vanishes for so many folks. I wonder when, if it doesn’t vanish, it warps, and Little John becomes an enemy of the people, a loser. When we begin to find strength in weakness, when we become villains, when we become takers. I wonder when laughter stops and snickering begins, and when lies become a language. I wonder when our priorities become transposed like John Little, when we reduce each other, when we love hatred. Little John lionized Richard I, a crusader, a colonizer. I wonder when this becomes his only redeeming quality. Just think of how easy it was to know right from wrong when you knew little about anything else. Go back to when existential morality was easy. Way back to the beginning.
A rewinder was a symbol of status among VHS-watchers. No longer did movie-lovers have to go through the anguish of rewinding a video in their VCR. It was a slick convenience, the rewinder, and it was the first technological gadget I can remember coming into being after I was conscious of what existed already. Rewinders were luxuries; we didn’t have one of those, Dad says. “But those things got with the fuckin’ program.” Movie renters were told to “Be kind. Rewind.” It matters to be able to get back to the beginning in a hurry when we should. Oo-De-Lally, it matters.
A whistling rooster with Roger Miller’s voice. Robin Hood and Little John walking through the forest.
Jacob Simmons is an MFA candidate at Fresno State. He writes about things that go in jars, people named John, space, and elephants. His work can be read in Under the Sun magazine and the New Limestone Review. He is a 2024 Pushcart nominee who teaches high school English in California’s Central Valley.
