One of the many thesis here at Mixed Mikkel with Mikkel is “everything exists within context of everything else” also stated as “everything in service as the next thing.” This has been a recurring point of my writing for however long I have been writing (something we’ll get to in a second).

We are the succession summation of every moment that has come before. Everything we are is because of what we’ve done and what has has happened to us. I don’t think that’s a particularly controversial statement, but I also think I don’t actively acknowledge how much I personally have internalized that sentiment.

I was catching up with my friend Kristen a few weeks ago and she said how it was clear that I was good at narrativizing and reflecting when I was catching her up on the things that had happened in the intervening months. I get told I’m pretty good at self reflection fairly often for whatever that’s worth. But it’s funny because I don’t think of myself as good at it. It’s something that happens as naturally as breathing. I don’t remember training myself on this particular thing. I think in stories. In beginnings, middles, and ends. Maybe that’s just what happens when you experience linear time and constantly try to make sense of it.

In any case, this particular February, I have been thinking about Canon Events.

Introduced in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the central idea is fairly self explanatory if you’re into comics, but if you’re not into comics 1) hi, not sure how you stumbled onto me, but I’m happy to share my pop culture knowledge and 2) the canon event is something so critical to a character, that it happens in almost every single iteration of the character.

This is Uncle Ben dying. This is Krypton being destroyed and Kal-El getting adopted by the Kents. This is the Waynes getting murdered in Crime Alley.

And while I am aware that all of the things I’ve listed here are tragic events, there’s no actual rule that canon events have to be tragic. And some versions of the characters do tamper with the canon, seen both in Across the Spider-Verse and the DC Absolute titles.

But with that established, I wanted to document my own list of canon events. The things that made me… me. The ones that I can point to and go “and here you the foundation of everything else to come.”

1) Unbuckling my car seat from the car while the car was still in motion. (God bless my mother, for she was absolutely terrified seeing the car seat on its side, tilted down, and pressed against the rear passenger door).

2) Microwaving my family’s shoes and the hotel remote control when left to my own devices. I wanted the shoes to be warm. I was just curious about what would happen to a remote control if you microwaved. Turns out electrical components catch fire easily and they break it. I was never caught and only copped to it years later.

3) We jump forward, but in middle school, my English teacher encouraged me to joining the creative writing club after reading one of my assignments and I can still point to that particular moment as the genesis of me as a writer. I even have middle school era writing still.

4) Freshman year of high school, I think the most defining event was hearing how my middle school ex’s current boyfriend thought I “sounded like someone who would shoot up a school.” I think to this day, it is the cruelest thing I think anyone has ever said about me. A part of me probably tries to do as much good in the world as a means of spiting that asshole.

5) Junior year, I get approached by the theater kids. They are putting on a production of Thoroughly Modern Millie, and they need an Asian male lead. Well, that is to say they needed another. I was later cast as Bun Foo, a role that Pat Morita actually played in the original film, although the role was originally written as “Oriental No. 2,” something to do this, I also think about.

The weird racial dynamics of a mixed Filipino playing a Chinese henchmen aside, the theater program was instrumental to who I would eventually become.

I would never get cast in a leading role again. I would later join the ensemble of our Little Shop of Horrors run and our Annie Get Your Gun! production, and to wit, I ended up mentoring a bunch of theater kids during this time. I became a tutor, a resource, a font, a marshal. I think I probably could have handled another leading role, but I also think that not having one did set me up for something interesting things in college.

When I first started penning this post, I did think about listing every single canon event in my life to date, but part way through I realized that some of the other events I considered canon were truly rooted in these five, and I do have to produce content at such a pace such that it is fair and reasonable that I can do “The Mapping of a College Mikkel” later this year.

Is that too meta? Probably, but this entire post was about canon events, so some degree of meta is kind of required.