The Saturday Window
We're sitting on the couch, James and I, watching Barney. This is a new love of his, one that I hope will be fleeting. I much prefer the cute, fluffy, speech and language impaired muppets from Sesame Street.
I look at my child, who greets the television every morning with an enthusiastic, "Iwanttb," and realize that he will never know what a privilege it is to have a good show, a children's program, available to him nearly twenty-four hours a day. When I was a kid, we had to wait for Saturdays, and what a buffet of mind-numbing programming that was. I remember starting the day with The Superfriends, watching (but wanting to smash) The Smurfs, and feeling a little bit frightened during Scooby-Doo. I remember Godzilla (and his asinine little relative, Godzuki). I remember relishing Fred Flintstones' baritone, and enjoying his hyperactive, kiss-ass friend, Barney. Land Of The Lost was the scariest of all shows, with its smooth, sparkly rocks, hissy Sleestaks, and the T-Rex that always crammed his snout into the cave where the Marshall family was hiding. When noon finally arrived, and with it, ABC's Wide World of Sports, it was like leaving the amusement park--you'd had a good time but wanted nothing more than to stay and take another spin.
My children will never know "The Saturday Window." They will never struggle with black and white televisions and rabbit-ear antennaes (so vivid are my memories of struggling to adjust the spokes so that I could get a faint picture of "The Three Stooges" or "Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home" on the Canadian Channel; didn't matter if that I couldn't make out any dialogue because of static--just as long as I could see what was going on). They will never anticpate the one time of day that Sesame Street is scheduled, because, for them, it's available twelve times a day, and if it wasn't, we could always TiVo it.
Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe it's like TVs and DVD players in cars. Maybe it's all about progress. All I know is that I wouldn't trade The Flintstones or The Jetsons for some of the shitty shows that my children have the privilege of viewing (i.e. SpongeBob, Teletubbies, Franklin), even if it did mean that I wouldn't have to stand in one position, clutching an antennae and listening to static, to watch them.
I look at my child, who greets the television every morning with an enthusiastic, "Iwanttb," and realize that he will never know what a privilege it is to have a good show, a children's program, available to him nearly twenty-four hours a day. When I was a kid, we had to wait for Saturdays, and what a buffet of mind-numbing programming that was. I remember starting the day with The Superfriends, watching (but wanting to smash) The Smurfs, and feeling a little bit frightened during Scooby-Doo. I remember Godzilla (and his asinine little relative, Godzuki). I remember relishing Fred Flintstones' baritone, and enjoying his hyperactive, kiss-ass friend, Barney. Land Of The Lost was the scariest of all shows, with its smooth, sparkly rocks, hissy Sleestaks, and the T-Rex that always crammed his snout into the cave where the Marshall family was hiding. When noon finally arrived, and with it, ABC's Wide World of Sports, it was like leaving the amusement park--you'd had a good time but wanted nothing more than to stay and take another spin.
My children will never know "The Saturday Window." They will never struggle with black and white televisions and rabbit-ear antennaes (so vivid are my memories of struggling to adjust the spokes so that I could get a faint picture of "The Three Stooges" or "Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home" on the Canadian Channel; didn't matter if that I couldn't make out any dialogue because of static--just as long as I could see what was going on). They will never anticpate the one time of day that Sesame Street is scheduled, because, for them, it's available twelve times a day, and if it wasn't, we could always TiVo it.
Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe it's like TVs and DVD players in cars. Maybe it's all about progress. All I know is that I wouldn't trade The Flintstones or The Jetsons for some of the shitty shows that my children have the privilege of viewing (i.e. SpongeBob, Teletubbies, Franklin), even if it did mean that I wouldn't have to stand in one position, clutching an antennae and listening to static, to watch them.
posted by Cate at 10:05 AM
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